Understanding the Climate Impacts of Hydrogen Emissions

Renewable hydrogen (RH2), produced from renewable feedstocks, can replace fossil fuels to help decarbonize some of the heaviest polluting and hardest-to-electrify sectors, such as industrial processes and maritime shipping. However, recent research underscores the risk of hydrogen emissions— the hydrogen molecules that we release into the atmosphere— in warming the climate.

Research from the Environmental Defense Fund and others shows strong climate benefits when using RH2 made from renewable electricity and water in place of fossil fuels, but those benefits vary depending on how much hydrogen is emitted into the atmosphere. The climate benefits from a well-regulated, clean, and renewable …

Department of Energy Hydrogen Program Plan

The Department of Energy Hydrogen Program Plan (the Plan) outlines the strategic high-level focus areas of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Program (the Program). The term “Hydrogen Program” refers not to any single office within DOE, but rather to the cohesive and coordinated effort of multiple offices that conduct research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) activities on hydrogen technologies.

This edition of the Hydrogen Program Plan reflects DOE’s focus on conducting coordinated RDD&D activities to enable the adoption of hydrogen technologies across multiple applications and sectors. It reflects important changes since 2020, including updated supporting data and analysis, a …

Fact Sheet: Green Hydrogen’s Impact on Water Supplies

Clean hydrogen has received a lot of interest for its potential use as a tool for decarbonization but has also prompted a lot of concerns. Hydrogen production and use can have serious consequences on water supplies, particularly in areas already facing water scarcity. The production of green hydrogen, as well as certain end uses, can be very water intensive. This 3-page fact sheet outlines green hydrogen’s impact on water supplies.…

Hydrogen for Ammonia

Ammonia production is one of the main uses of hydrogen today. The Haber process reacts hydrogen with nitrogen from the air at high temperatures and pressures with a catalyst to make ammonia. Nearly 90 percent of ammonia is in turn used to make chemical fertilizers, with the remainder used to produce other compounds like explosives, plastics, and synthetic fibers. Ammonia demand may grow considerably for use as a carbon-free fuel in sectors like marine shipping. However, this overview will highlight ammonia’s use for fertilizer.…

Hydrogen for Refining

Refineries take crude oil extracted from the ground and refine it into fuels that can be used in vehicles, aircraft, and other equipment. The process of transforming and separating out other molecules also results in a variety of products that can be burned on-site for energy or sold to the chemicals industry. These petrochemicals are a small share of overall refinery output but can be a significant part of their revenue and total petrochemical output.

Refineries are one of the top consumers of hydrogen today, using it to remove sulfur from crude oil and as part of other processes like …

Hydrogen for Primary Steel

Most primary steel (i.e., high-quality steel originating from iron ore) is made today from the combination of a blast furnace (BF), responsible for 93 percent of global ironmaking, and a basic oxygen furnace (BOF), responsible for 71 percent of global steelmaking. The two processes are often integrated in a single system (BF-BOF) and rely heavily on coal. A loweremitting method involves using natural gas to purify iron ore via the direct reduced iron (DRI) process, then using electricity to make steel in an electric arc furnace (EAF). Hydrogen can replace natural gas in the DRI process, providing a near-term path …

Fact Sheet: Blue Hydrogen’s Impact on Water Supplies

Clean hydrogen has received a lot of interest for its potential use as a tool for decarbonization but has also prompted a lot of concerns. Hydrogen production and use can have serious consequences on water supplies, particularly in areas already facing water scarcity. The production of blue hydrogen, as well as certain end uses, can be very water intensive. This 3-page fact sheet outlines blue hydrogen’s impact on water supplies.…

Hydrogen for Petrochemicals

This overview describes how electrolytic hydrogen can obviate the need for fossil fuels in making most petrochemicals. It focuses on the carbon embodied in feedstocks, which get “chemically transformed and become part of the output products,” rather than fuels, which are burned for heat or electricity and immediately release carbon as CO2 (with these functions covered in separate overviews). While temporarily fixed, the carbon in feedstocks eventually is released into the atmosphere (such as when plastics are incinerated); thus, the carbon must ultimately come from a net-zero source rather than fossil fuels.

This fact sheet is part of an Energy …

Transitioning China’s Industries: Creating Clusters for Large-scale Green Hydrogen Integration

The industrial sector is currently China’s largest consumer of hydrogen and is expected to continue dominating hydrogen utilization — at an estimated 60 percent of the overall consumption.

China has carried out extensive efforts in green hydrogen and its utilization in industry. The large-scale utilization of green hydrogen in industry requires addressing two main challenges: (1) the supply of green hydrogen must reach a significant scale and stability, and (2) the high cost of hydrogen utilization needs to be addressed.

To address these challenges, this research introduces a “cluster development” model for efficiently deploying green hydrogen on a large scale …

Hydrogen for Aviation

The conventional approach to reducing aviation emissions has been via sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), defined as “liquid hydrocarbon jet fuel produced from renewable or waste resources that is compatible with existing aircraft and engines.” SAF uptake to date has been negligible, but the U.S. SAF Grand Challenge aims to rapidly scale its use by 2050.

Hydrogen could play several roles in decarbonizing aviation. Fuel cell-powered aircraft have high efficiencies but low range, while hydrogen combustion aircraft can achieve greater range but are still limited to about a third of the passenger market. Ultimately, aviation requires high energy densities to support …