DOE prioritizes quick turnarounds, community benefits for proposed hydrogen hubs

Submitting proposals for hydrogen hubs that will get built "sooner rather than later" is key to their success, the Department of Energy told hub applicants in a Jan. 12 call, imploring them to carefully consider the benefits their hubs will bring to local communities.

The DOE's feedback was the first from department officials since notices of encouragement or discouragement to the 79 hub candidates that submitted concept papers to the DOE late last year. Of those candidates, 33 received notices of encouragement in December – representing $34 billion of requested federal funds – while 46 were discouraged from continuing the application process.

Many of the 33 hubs that received encouragement overlap or are geographically adjacent to one another, and officials encouraged those candidates to combine their efforts for the final application phase.

"The depth and breadth of the response ... I believe eclipses by a significant margin any of the hydrogen programs being pursued by our friends in other like-minded countries around the world, raising the prospect that all of you will secure first-move advantage for the US in the race to fully commercialize hydrogen as the go-to energy of the 21st century," said David Crane, director of the DOE's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.

Ultimately the field of candidates will be reduced to six to 10 regions, each of which will receive a slice of the $7 billion earmarked for hub funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

During the Jan. 12 call, DOE officials asked for candidates to provide more specificity in their final applications, which are due April 7, 2023. Submissions should specify which elements of the hub will require federal joint funding and cost estimations for each element, along with plans for potential cost overruns.

The applications should also specify existing or expected hydrogen activities that are within the vicinity of the proposed hub's boundaries, and how these out-of-scope activities will help the hub foster a regional hydrogen marketplace.

"Ultimately, the DOE wants to fund projects that get built, and your application should help us assess how likely this is to occur," said Eric Miller, the DOE's hydrogen hubs division lead. "Towards that end, you should discuss where you hub stands on key development activities, and especially on commercial agreements for offtake and feedstock supply. We realize these kinds of agreements and other development activities are likely a work-in-progress, but the more you can help us understand their status, the better."

Calculating community benefits

Officials also took pains to underscore the weight the department will give to proposals that carefully consider local community impacts and benefits.

"Even if your institution as a sponsor likes to believe that being a good neighbor is embedded in your institutional culture, I would encourage you to consider a level of outreach and inclusion of effected stakeholders that may be beyond anything you had previously contemplated," Crane said.

Taking community benefits and impacts into serious consideration not only earns local goodwill, Crane added, but can help hubs stay on schedule.

"Let me emphasize that we ask you to consider this not only because it simply is the right thing to do, but also because from the DOE's perspective, to do so materially de-risks the project timetable from delay due to state or local opposition," he said. "The last thing we want to see at the DOE is a billion dollars of our precious hydrogen hub capital not deployed because an otherwise worthy project ran into entrenched opposition from local communities."