(Invited) The U.S. Department of Energy’s HydroGEN Consortium for Advanced Water Splitting Materials
Authors: Vickers James , Peterson David , Mow Rachel 
Published: September 2023

The goals of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) support those of the Biden Administration to build a clean and equitable energy economy and address the climate crisis through development and deployment of hydrogen technologies to the benefit of all Americans. HFTO is dedicated to meet the goals of DOE’s Hydrogen Shot,[1] which targets affordable clean hydrogen production at $1/kg within the decade, and the H2@Scale Initiative,[2] which aims to advance affordable hydrogen to enable decarbonization and revenue opportunities across multiple sectors.

HFTO’s HydroGEN consortium (https://www.h2awsm.org/) for advanced water splitting materials, part of the DOE’s Energy Materials Network (EMN), includes a focus on multiple clean hydrogen production pathways, including several relevant to solar hydrogen production. Since the consortium’s establishment in 2016, HydroGEN researchers have made significant progress in the areas of low and high temperature electrolysis, as well as photoelectrochemical (PEC) and solar thermochemical (STCH) hydrogen production pathways. The HydroGEN consortium facilitates collaborations between national laboratories, academia, and industry bringing together world-class technical expertise with state-of-the-art facilities made available to project partners. HydroGEN offers an extensive collection of materials research capabilities for addressing R&D challenges. Project participants can choose from over 40 unique capability nodes. Each capability comprises—a combination of a tool, technique, and expertise—that is unique to the national laboratory system.

HydroGEN has supported over 30 competitively selected R&D projects with industry and academic partners by providing streamlined access to national lab resources and expertise. The consortium is also credited with contributing over 100 publications, fostering cross-cutting activities to advance material performance and durability through community engagement and protocol development, and initiating critical laboratory-led efforts to address specific R&D gaps in the AWS portfolio. Despite the progress, there is still significant ground to be covered in the water splitting materials R&D space to enable low-cost and large-scale hydrogen production, especially in the direct solar hydrogen production pathway of artificial photosynthesis.

Current consortium efforts include photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production among other advanced water splitting pathways. The consortium seeks to discover and design new low-cost materials and increase the efficiency and durability of current systems for carbon-free hydrogen production. The consortium is also engaged in connecting the research community by developing a data platform for secure data transfers and public data sharing. Additionally, HydroGEN supports benchmarking performance and protocols of electrolyzer systems to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons across academia and industry. A new cohort of solar fuels focused projects were recently selected from the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) Number: DE-FOA-0002792 with additional funding in this area expected in the future.

[1] Hydrogen Shot | Department of Energy, https://www.energy.gov/fuelcells/hydroge-shot

[2] H2@Scale | Department of Energy, https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/h2scale

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