During America’s leading hydrogen event #H2Americas2024 Summit & Exhibition, we spoke to global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders about the future outlook for the hydrogen industry, including an interview with Dr Sunita Satyapal, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Director and Hydrogen Program Coordinator, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
“My name is Sunita Satyapal and I’m the Director of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the U.S. Department of Energy.
So I talked about the U.S. national clean hydrogen strategy and the roadmap that was released last year and our national goals of 10 million metric tons of clean hydrogen by 2030, double that so 20 million by 2040 and five times that by 2050, so 50 million metric tons of clean hydrogen for the U.S. as part of our comprehensive national strategy. And that would enable up to 10% of total emissions reduction, so aligned with reaching net zero by 2050.
So first of all hydrogen is often called the swiss army knife of clean energy, the fact that you can produce it from diverse domestic resources in any country and you can use it especially for those hard to decarbonize sectors. So heavy duty, transportation, industrial applications, it’s really an enabler, so the fact that it can enable, for instance, renewables, long duration energy storage, so it’s really that carbon free molecule that’s needed to help us decarbonize the economy. But it also offers energy security, resiliency, a lot of interesting imports, exports, and creating jobs, the whole domestic supply chain across countries.
I would say after decades both in industry and government, also academia, our labs, this is the most critical time I think for collaboration and coordination, so there are many new players and we need all of them, and so government, investors, industry, stakeholders, communities is very high priority, disadvantaged communities, the global community. So conferences like these are really critical, so they bring together stakeholders, 4,000 people here which is great to see and I think the coordination across the value chain for research all the way to deployment, financing, different mechanisms really to get that market acceleration are really critical.
So here obviously with the Americas growing, the U.S. alone produces roughly 10% of the global capacity of hydrogen, so 10 million tons not yet clean hydrogen, mostly from natural gas. Many countries are reliant on imports, so to meet their net-zero carbon climate goals they’re looking at importing, we have hydrogen hubs. There’s huge legislation so President Biden has the boldest climate action agenda in the nations history, so a lot of emphasis, and then today we just announced the H2 twin cities which partners cities across continents. This was launched at COP 2 years ago, so really exciting announcement with the Americas theme, so we have Mexico and Houston in the U.S. partnering and then also the U.S. again Houston plus Columbia partnering, specifically to share lessons learned, best practices and really to help to accelerate clean hydrogen deployment in the Americas.”
Join us at #H2Americas2025
We’re returning to Washington D.C. to once again provide global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders the opportunity to meet the entire hydrogen ecosystem at #H2Americas2025 Summit & Exhibition taking place on 3-4 September 2025. Don’t miss the opportunity to witness the latest products and solutions, learn the latest news, policies and updates, establish key connections and sign business deals to accelerate the deployment of the hydrogen economy. Register your place among hydrogen pioneers.
