Industrial

Joe Biden to announce winners of $7bn US hydrogen hubs programme on Friday: reports

Long-awaited list of successful bids could unleash billions of dollars of investment in low-carbon H2

Joe Biden, US president.
Joe Biden, US president.Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Getty Images

US President Joe Biden is set to announce the winners of the government’s $7bn hydrogen hubs programme on Friday, according to reports citing several separate sources familiar with the matter.

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According to Reuters and Bloomberg, Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech on the clean energy transition in Pennsylvania — which is part of a consortium of states hoping to deliver the ARCH2 hydrogen hub across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.
ARCH2 is one of ten hubs identified as possible winners by Norwegian research house Rystad Energy and published exclusively by Hydrogen Insight in August this year — from a possible 33 applications that have been “encouraged” by the Department of Energy (DOE).
The Bloomberg source noted, however, that Biden’s schedule is subject to change, should the evolving Israel-Palestine conflict require his immediate attention.

The long-awaited announcement is likely to trigger a host of investment decisions on hydrogen clusters of production projects and demand centres across an expected six to ten winners — who can expect to receive a slice of the $7bn fund.

The winners could also be in line for a portion of a $1bn government fund earmarked to stimulate hydrogen demand.

However, the DOE has not yet revealed how it will allocate the funds across the winners — and experts have expressed doubt about whether even an equitable division would be enough to build the hydrogen clusters.

Rystad has described the budget as “modest” compared to the total needed to 2030, noting that substantial amounts of private investment will be required to plug the gap. Around $33.5bn has been promised across the 33 encouraged applications so far.

The report of an impending list of winners comes after an anticlimactic speech from US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm at last week’s Hydrogen Americas summit, in which she explicitly warned that she was not making any announcements.

Delegates had been hoping for an update to the Treasury and DOE’s green hydrogen rules — which could include some element of additionality or temporal correlation — or an announcement about the hydrogen hubs.

Granholm said last week that the US government is “very close” to making an announcement on the hubs, although she did not elaborate on the green hydrogen rules which, as Hydrogen Insight reported last week, appear to be bogged down in intra-departmental legal wrangling.
Hydrogen Insight contacted the DOE for verification but had not received a response at the time of publication.
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Published 11 October 2023, 11:26Updated 11 October 2023, 11:26