The U.S. Department of Energy's Fuel Cell Technologies Office has issued two requests for information (RFIs) seeking feedback from the research community and relevant stakeholders about hydrogen production and hydrogen delivery research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities aimed at developing technologies that can ultimately produce and deliver low-cost hydrogen.

The purpose of these RFIs is to solicit feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders on issues related to electrolytic hydrogen production pathways and hydrogen transmission and distribution, specifically with respect to reports developed at two recent workshops. The first workshop focused on hydrogen transmission and distribution and was held at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on February 25–26, 2014, in Golden, Colorado. The purpose of the workshop was to share information and identify the RD&D needs to enable low-cost, effective delivery of hydrogen from centralized production facilities to the point of use (e.g., retail, light-duty vehicle stations and other applications).

The second workshop also was held at NREL on February 27–28, 2014, in Golden, Colorado, and focused on electrolytic hydrogen production. The purpose was to discuss and share information on the RD&D needs for enabling low-cost, effective hydrogen production from all types of water electrolysis systems, both centralized and forecourt. Based on the results of these workshops and discussion between DOE and the workshop participants, the reports were published in July 2014.

EERE is also interested in the community’s opinion of the technologies that have the most potential to meet DOE goals of producing low-cost hydrogen at $2.30/kilogram (kg) for forecourt (1,500 kg/day) and $2.00/kg for centralized (50,000 kg/day) by 2020, and reducing hydrogen delivery from the point of production to the point of use in consumer vehicles to <$3/gallon of gasoline equivalent (gge) by 2015 and to <$2/gge by 2020 (delivery only, all costs in 2007$).

For details, see the RFI announcements DE-FOA-0001187 and DE-FOA-0001188 and email responses and questions about the RFIs to h2workshop@ee.doe.gov with “response” or "question" in the subject line. RFI responses must be received no later than 5:00 p.m. (EST) on December 5, 2014. These RFIs are not funding opportunity announcements; therefore, DOE is not accepting applications for funding regarding these topics at this time.