Department of Energy Hydrogen Program Plan

The Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Program Plan (the Program Plan or Plan) outlines the strategic high-level focus areas of DOE’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, and demonstration (RD&D) activities on hydrogen technologies. This terminology and the coordinated efforts on hydrogen among relevant DOE offices have been in place since 2004, and provide an inclusive and strategic view of how the Department coordinates activities on hydrogen across applications and sectors. This version of the Plan updates and expands upon previous versions including the Hydrogen Posture Plan and the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program Plan, and provides a coordinated high-level summary of hydrogen related activities across DOE.

The 2006 Hydrogen Posture Plan fulfilled the requirement in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT 2005) that the Energy Secretary transmit to Congress a coordinated plan for DOE’s hydrogen and fuel cell activities. For historical context, the original Posture Plan, issued in 2004, outlined a coordinated plan for DOE and the U.S. Department of Transportation to meet the goals of the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative (HFI) and implement the 2002 National Hydrogen Energy Technology Roadmap. The HFI was launched in 2004 to accelerate research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies for use in transportation, electricity generation, and portable power applications. The Roadmap provided a blueprint for the public and private efforts required to fulfill a long-term national vision for hydrogen energy, as outlined in A National Vision of America’s Transition to a Hydrogen Economy—to 2030 and Beyond. Both the Roadmap and the Vision were developed out of meetings involving DOE, industry, academia, non-profit organizations, and other stakeholders. The Roadmap, the Vision, the Posture Plans, the 2011 Program Plan, and the results of key stakeholder workshops continue to form the underlying basis for this current edition of the Program Plan.

This edition of the Program Plan reflects the Department’s focus on conducting coordinated RD&D activities to enable the adoption of hydrogen technologies across multiple applications and sectors. It includes content from the various plans and documents developed by individual offices within DOE working on hydrogen-related activities, including: the Office of Fossil Energy's Hydrogen Strategy: Enabling a Low Carbon Economy, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Multi-year RD&D Plan, the Office of Nuclear Energy’s Integrated Energy Systems 2020 Roadmap, and the Office of Science’s Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy. Many of these documents are also in the process of updates and revisions and will be posted online.

Through this overarching document, the reader will gain information on the key RD&D needs to enable the largescale use of hydrogen and related technologies—such as fuel cells and turbines—in the economy, and how the Department’s various offices are addressing those needs. The Program will continue to periodically revise the Plan, along with all program office RD&D plans, to reflect technological progress, programmatic changes, policy decisions, and updates based on stakeholder input and reviews.