The U.S. Dept. of Energy selected 33 public-private teams—out of 79 total contenders—to move forward as the strongest candidates in the competition for up to $7 billion in federal funding to support development of large regional clean energy hydrogen hubs.

通过2021年基础设施法资助，枢纽是一个网络of clean hydrogen producers and the infrastructure that connects them. They are part of a larger $8-billion program established by the law to back efforts to shave costs of producing hydrogen with renewable power electrolysis.

The 79 applicants said project investments included $150 billion of their own funds, but they had also requested $60 billion from DOE. The chosen projects are seeking $33 billion in federal funds.

In its Dec. 27 notice, the agency would not release names of the 33 teams it “encouraged” to submit a formal funding application by an April 7 deadline, or the 46 that were “discouraged” from continuing—although teams picked to proceed in the competition could release details publicly. The most common reason for discouragement was that a development concept focused on only one element of the hub, according to DOE.

Proposed concepts “that would depend on technologies unready for commercial scale demonstrations and projects whose elements were not readily suited to help catalyze a national clean hydrogen network,”也灰心，该机构说。但是，灰心的申请人并未被禁止正式申请。

美国能源部说，它的“鼓励或劝阻通知”于12月27日发送给申请人的目的是要警告他们花费资源来制定不太可能达到氢气枢纽计划目标的概念的全面应用。

DOE divided the full program funding into four phases of competition that will result in “go/no” decisions, it said. The first phase includes planning and analysis to ensure the proposal is technologically and financially viable. Phase 2 will finalize engineering design, labor agreements and more.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in August, also provides tax credits for new hydrogen production capacity investment, which are “generous enough to spur announcements for at least an initial round of multibillion-dollar projects,” says Housley Carr, an energy sector analyst at consultant Renewable Energy Analytics.

“I would expect a lot of front-end engineering work [in 2023] and a lot of contracts to companies that do that kind of thing,” noted Brian Murphy, hydrogen analyst at S&P Global Commodities Insights.

About 240 MW of U.S. electrolysis capacity is either under construction or permitted to come online in 2023, says S&P Global, with 136 MW of added capacity announced or in an early planning stage. This is equivalent to about 7% of global electrolyzer production capacity set to be added in 2023, compared to 16% in Europe. The analytics firm projects larger U.S. capacity gain in the following year.

DOE预计，到2023年傍晚或初秋季，将选择六到10个枢纽将获得4亿至12.5亿美元。

Contender Details Slowly Emerge

According to information made public by some competing teams, eight proposals that cleared the first hurdle include one by Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma called HALO that includes partners Shell, TC Energy, Williams, Halliburton, GE, Plug Power, Total Energies, Oak Ridge National Lab and a number of others.

由科罗拉多州，新墨西哥州，犹他州和怀俄明州的一支团队称为西部州际氢枢纽，其参与者在内，包括工程公司阿特金斯（Atkins），由怀俄明州官员确定为主要承包商。Xcel Energy，Avangrid，Dominion Energy Utah，Los Alamos National Laboratory，DOE国家可再生能源实验室（NREL），桑迪亚国家实验室（Sandia National National Laboratories）等还包括Xcel Energy，Avangrid，Dominion Energy National Laboratory，包括学术合作伙伴。该团队说，该项目需要10亿至12.5亿美元的资金。

The Hawaii Pacific Hydrogen Hub includes 21 partners, primarily located in the state, and would involve existing and proposed hydrogen production to be deployed across the state and Indo-Pacific region. Hawaiian Electric, NREL and the University of Hawaii are included.

Houston and the University of Texas are teamed up to develop theproposed HyVelocity Hub,with partners Chevron, ENGIE, ExxonMobil, Fortescue Future Industries, Phillips66, Sempra Infrastructure, Shell, Siemens the Port of Houston and others.

Industry firms McDermott, Quantas and Orsted are named among its team members.

DOE said at least two hubs must be located in regions with the greatest natural gas resources. A second Texas proposal selected to move forward, Trans Permian H2Hub headed by MMEX Resources, includes Siemens Energy and a number of cities in the state's energy-producing Permian region, the team said in an announcement. The private-led hub already includes two hydrogen production projects, one that uses natural gas and one that uses renewable energy.

The Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub also received the nod from DOE for a plan that includes hydrogen production, storage and a 590-mile pipeline system to store, collect and distribute hydrogen across Oregon and Washington, it said.

One former participant in a Pacific Northwest hub plan proposed for Washington and Oregon—Lake Oswego, Ore.-based solar energy company Obsidian Renewables—withdrew from the team last year and submitted another regional plan on its own that won DOE approval, said Ken Dragoon, the firm's director of hydrogen development. Its proposed project needs $700 million from DOE and has $10 billion from private sources, the developer said.

But it is not clear whether thePacific Northwest Hydrogen Association proposalfrom the two states and its multi-partner team, which was submitted in November, has also received DOE's okay to proceed with development.

California’s Alliance for Reliable Clean Hydrogen Energy System also earned DOE's blessing to submit a full application. Its proposal has two interconnected objectives—establish a renewable hydrogen hub in the state and create an economically sustainable, and expanding, renewable hydrogen market there and beyond its border, the alliance said in a statement. Partners include industry firms AECOM and Wood, as well as utility PGE, Toyota Corp., Plug Power, Hyundai, Michelin, BOSCH, Bloom Energy, Avantus and others.

中西部清洁氢联盟，一个由55个碳自由能源生产商和开发商以及氢技术提供商，公用事业，制造商以及国家实验室和大学组成的多层联盟also confirmed its DOE go-ahead.这个项目需要40亿美元的机构和other sources of funding, its developers had said earlier.

The Pennsylvania-backed team, called Decarbonization Network of Appalachia, will proceed as well, according tomedia confirmation。公私合作伙伴关系以壳和Equ为导线，设想了一个所谓的“蓝色氢”枢纽，该枢纽从碳捕获和封存的天然气中产生该物质，但没有其他细节共享。

Also moving forward is a northeast U.S. proposal by New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine. With the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority as the lead partner, the team includes more than 60 partners such as utilities ConEdison, Eversource and National Grid, as well as Nucor Steel, Plug Power, Avangrid, EPD Renewables, Equinor, GE, Invenergy and Pratt & Whitney.

仍然是TBD的建议

Other proposal developers that have not announced or it is still unclear if they were asked to take the next step to submit a full application include a coalition of major utilities in the Southeast—the Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Energy, Dominion, Southern Co. and others that are teamed up with Battelle and a variety of industries across the region.

West Virginia also may still be in the running, leading a regional hub with Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania that is teamed with Battelle, Babcox & Wilcox, Dominion, TC Energy, Marathon Oil and Longridge Energy Partners. The latter firmbuilt a gas-fired power plant in Ohiothat will eventually transition to 100% hydrogen fuel. Its GE turbine currently can burn up to 15% hydrogen and began using a blend of hydrogen and natural gas in April 2022.

Governors of North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, and Wisconsin submitted a proposal that includes Bakken Energy, which would redevelop the Basin Electric Power Cooperatives Great Plains synfuels plant built in 1984.

The status of Florida Power and Light's submitted proposal is unclear, although in mid-December it said it broke ground on a $65-million green hydrogen hub that will use power from 200,000 solar panels to separate hydrogen from water.