DOE calls on ‘tribal communities’ to forward green agenda in clean hydrogen announcement

The Energy Department on Monday announced $60 million in green energy funding, including a multi-million-dollar initiative to help "tribal communities" participate in the Biden administration effort to move the country away from fossil fuel energy.

The funding program appears in large part to focus on initiatives for clean hydrogen because producing it requires little to no carbon dioxide emissions. 

The department in its release on the initiative says it is allocating $42 million among 22 projects to advance technology for “producing, storing, and deploying clean hydrogen.”

In addition, the department said $17.8 million will be used to implement a new North American university research consortium to "help states and tribal communities implement grid resilience programs and achieve decarbonization goals."

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the funding a “bold step” toward decarbonizing difficult sectors such as industry and transportation and cited hydrogen technology as one of the “solutions” to accelerate the country's move toward renewables.

Such efforts mark another step in President Biden’s goal of net-zero Co2 emissions by 2050 and are part of the $8 billion clean hydrogen initiative outlined in the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. However, the cost to scale the energy source is expected to be much more expensive. 

Reuters reported in 2021 that using green hydrogen to decarbonize grids and industries worldwide would require nearly $15 trillion in spending by 2050, with another report estimating $131 trillion by the same year to reverse so-called climate change by “transforming the global energy landscape.”

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