In support of the Obama Administration's all-of-the-above energy strategy, the Energy Department today announced up to $4 million in new funding to address critical challenges and barriers for low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen production. These investments are helping to reduce the nation's reliance on gasoline and diversifying our nation's energy portfolio while reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

The new funding opportunity solicits projects focused on innovative materials, processes, and systems that are needed to establish the technical and cost feasibility for renewable and low carbon hydrogen production. The long-term goal of production and delivery research and development is a high-volume hydrogen cost of $2–$4 per gallon gasoline equivalent (gge) (delivered and dispensed, but untaxed) to allow fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) to be competitive on a dollar per mile basis with gasoline in hybrid electric vehicles. Selected projects will represent a wide range of production feed stocks and pathways to achieve this goal. Topic areas include:

• Production of low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen from hybrid approaches: Projects selected under this topic will support the development of novel systems using natural gas combined with renewable or low-carbon resources to produce hydrogen with greenhouse gas emissions significantly reduced when compared to traditional steam methane reforming.
• Low cost production of hydrogen using bio-derived liquids:  Projects selected under this topic will address hydrogen production from bio-derived liquids such as bio-oils, sugars, and alcohols using integrated system technologies for thermochemical conversion.
• Hydrogen production through direct solar water-splitting technologies: Projects selected under this topic will pertain to advanced materials-based systems for direct solar water splitting for the production of low-cost renewable hydrogen.

The Energy Department will make available up to $4 million for projects from industry, academia, and national labs. Any additional funds are subject to appropriations. More information, application requirements, and instructions can be found on the EERE Funding Opportunity Exchange website.