As part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to expand access to data and develop clean, domestic energy sources, the Energy Department launched a new app to more easily provide best practices and procedures for safely handling and using hydrogen to power fuel cells.
Following this week’s rollout of President Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution, the Energy Department announced four research and development projects to bring next generation biofuels on line faster and drive down the cost of producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuels from biomass.
The projects—located in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin—represent a $13 million Energy Department investment.
Once primarily the province of under-capitalized independent producers who refined horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology to tap into the once-marginal tight gas reservoirs in Appalachia, the Central U.S. and Western Canada, the massive reserve has now sparked attention from the major industry players.
ExxonMobil, through its acquisition of XTO Energy in 2010, other supermajors, and a host of gas-short Asian players have since taken positions in the U.S. and Canadian shale gas play, with total capital commitments exceeding $100 billion.
The U.S. Energy Department has partnered with both private and public sectors to develop the country’s hydrogen infrastructure, dubbed “H2USA.”
H2USA is partnership of hydrogen and fuel cell industries with government agencies, automakers, and gasoline suppliers. Stakeholders will begin research to identify cost-effective infrastructure to develop affordable, clean hydrogen fuel in the U.S., creating more sustainable and less dependency on the current gasoline industry.
