The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is planning to terminate funding for over 600 awards totaling $23 billion, including a full termination of funding for the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program.
Conrad Schneider, Senior Director, U.S., at Clean Air Task Force said:
“DOE is slashing funding to American companies, investors, and communities across the U.S.
“Over the last several years, the U.S. has rightly invested in innovative energy projects that have supported economic growth and workforce development, strengthened global leadership, catalyzed additional investment in local economies, while positioning the country to meet rising energy demands and lowering electricity bills for consumers and businesses. Today’s move jeopardizes the investments and benefits that companies and investors have made. These sweeping funding cuts will have far-reaching consequences – with virtually no region unscathed.
“The federal government plays an essential role in addressing gaps that stall the commercialization of energy breakthroughs by providing grants and loans to accelerate innovative projects. By abruptly canceling funding for several hundred energy projects, the U.S. risks ceding American energy leadership and signals that U.S. innovation is not a priority.”
Rachel Starr, CATF’s Senior U.S. Policy Manager, Hydrogen and Transportation Decarbonization said:
“A full cancellation of the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program would amount to rescinding approximately $7B of federal funding from innovative clean energy projects and would cost 334,280 expected jobs. This would jeopardize billions of dollars of public and private investment and economic benefit in both red and blue states and districts. The hydrogen hubs program was a bipartisan initiative passed in a bipartisan law; cutting the support now would be antithetical to the administration’s stated goals to bolster domestic energy production and American competitiveness. If the program is dismantled, it can undermine the development of the domestic hydrogen industry. The U.S. will risk its leadership position on the global stage, both in terms of exporting a variety of transportation fuels that rely on hydrogen as a feedstock and in terms of technological development as other countries continue to fund and make progress on a variety of hydrogen production pathways and end uses.”
The awards cited by DOE were issued by the Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Grid Deployment (GDO), Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC), Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Fossil Energy (FE).
CATF mapped where the impacted projects are, which can be found here. Map pins indicate the place of performance, and where there are a number of multi-state projects, the location is the recipient address.