Celebrating Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day 2021: Highlights From NREL's Research

October 8—10/08—is National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day! This year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is celebrating this symbolic date, chosen to represent the atomic weight of hydrogen (1.008), by highlighting innovative hydrogen and fuel cell research across the laboratory.

NREL research is lowering the cost and increasing the scale of technologies to make, store, move, and use hydrogen across multiple energy sectors. Our work supports the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) H2@Scale initiative and NREL's Electrons to Molecules and Integrated Energy Pathways research areas.

Here are a few highlights from NREL's industry-leading hydrogen and fuel cell research.

Electric Hydrogen Partnership Hopes to Repeat Success with Renewable Hydrogen Technology

NREL and clean hydrogen company Electric Hydrogen have inked an agreement to develop high-performance electrolyzer components, helping to scale clean hydrogen and invent new opportunities for decarbonization. The three-year, $3.6 million collaboration will diagnose sources of degradation in commercial electrolysis cells and will validate advanced designs that use higher stack currents. Several of the NREL and Electric Hydrogen team were also behind the success of a long-lasting collaboration between NREL and First Solar, and the Electric Hydrogen collaboration hopes to repeat that remarkable progress.

DOE Announces $6 Million for NREL H2@Scale Projects To Help Reach Hydrogen Shot Goals

This week DOE announced $6 million for six NREL-industry cooperative projects that will complement existing H2@Scale efforts and support DOE's Hydrogen Shot goal to drive down the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% within the decade. The selected cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) projects will leverage the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform to enable the integration of hydrogen technologies in future energy systems, including energy storage and a specific focus on safety and risk mitigation. Read more in the DOE announcement.

Breakthrough Analysis Finds Electrified Heavy-Duty Vehicle Powertrains Could Provide Lower Total Cost of Ownership

A new total cost of ownership (TCO) study from NREL finds that battery electric and fuel cell commercial electric trucks could be economically competitive with conventional diesel trucks by 2025 in some operating scenarios. The research leveraged NREL's Transportation Technology Total Cost of Ownership (T3CO) modeling framework to evaluate six leading powertrain technologies to quantify the TCO of different truck options and identify operating scenarios where each technology may have an economic advantage.

Researchers Outline Strategies To Achieve DOE Hydrogen Shot Goals

NREL scientists offered strategies for accelerating clean hydrogen production technologies during the Electrolysis and Advanced Pathways panels at the 2021 Hydrogen Shot Summit. The DOE event rallied thousands of stakeholders working to tackle the climate crises through actions, strategies, and innovations in hydrogen. DOE's Hydrogen Shot, launched June 7, 2021, aims to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80%—achieving $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade. View the Hydrogen Shot Summit proceedings.

Click here for the full list of research updates.