[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                  H2SUCCESS: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
                   TO ADVANCE A CLEAN HYDROGEN FUTURE

=======================================================================

                                     
                                     

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           FEBRUARY 17, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-45

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

                                     
                                     
                                     
                 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
               
                                     
                                     

       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov




                                 ______
                                 

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

46-799PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2023












              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman

ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California             JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York                 STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia                  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                MIKE CAREY, OHIO
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                         Subcommittee on Energy

                 HON. JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Chairman

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             RANDY WEBER, Texas, 
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan                  Ranking Member
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     JIM BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California









                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                           February 17, 2022

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Jamaal Bowman, Chairman, Subcommittee 
  on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................     7
    Written Statement............................................     8

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................     9
    Written Statement............................................    10

Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
  Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................    11

Written statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member, 
  Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and 
  Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    11

                               Witnesses:

Mr. Keith Wipke, Laboratory Program Manager at NREL
    Oral Statement...............................................    13
    Written Statement............................................    15

Dr. Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist and Head Carbon Wrangler at 
  Carbon Direct
    Oral Statement...............................................    30
    Written Statement............................................    32

Ms. Rachel Fakhry, Senior Advocate at Natural Resources Defense 
  Council
    Oral Statement...............................................    51
    Written Statement............................................    53

Dr. Tomas Diaz de la Rubia, Vice President for Research and 
  Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma
    Oral Statement...............................................    82
    Written Statement............................................    84

Mr. Sheldon Kimber, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of 
  Intersect Power
    Oral Statement...............................................    89
    Written Statement............................................    91

Discussion.......................................................    95






 
                  H2SUCCESS: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
                   TO ADVANCE A CLEAN HYDROGEN FUTURE

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                            Subcommittee on Energy,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., 
via Zoom, Hon. Jamaal Bowman [Chairman of the Subcommittee] 
presiding.


[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



    Chairman Bowman. This hearing will now come to order. 
Without objection, the Chairman is authorized to declare recess 
at any time.
    Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note that, 
today, the Committee is meeting virtually. I want to announce a 
couple of reminders to the Members about the conduct of this 
hearing. First, Members should keep their video feed on as long 
as they are present in the hearing. Members are responsible for 
their own microphones. Please also keep your microphones muted 
unless you are speaking. Finally, if Members have documents 
they wish to submit for the record, please email them to the 
Committee Clerk, whose email address was circulated prior to 
the hearing.
    Good morning, and thank you to all of our witnesses who are 
joining us virtually today to discuss the importance of clean 
hydrogen research. This is a timely topic, one that has quickly 
risen to the center of energy policymaking and debate. There is 
no doubt that hydrogen can play a valuable role in our national 
and global decarbonization efforts. But crucial questions and 
uncertainties remain, and our work on this Committee can help 
resolve them.
    In setting the stage for this hearing, I would like to 
offer a few thoughts that I believe can help guide us. And I 
welcome further discussion with those who may disagree with 
some aspects of my perspective. Current hydrogen production 
methods are very carbon-intensive and are responsible for 830 
million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent 
of the annual CO2 emissions of the United Kingdom 
and Indonesia combined. We must complement our excitement about 
hydrogen's potential with caution and care. In my view, when it 
is made from 100 percent renewable electricity, using a process 
called electrolysis, what is known as ``green hydrogen,'' has 
the potential to make a crucial but targeted contribution to 
meeting our climate goals.
    We can replace the polluting forms of hydrogen that are 
currently used in certain industrial processes. Green hydrogen 
could be one of the keys to decarbonizing difficult sectors 
like long-haul shipping, aviation, and steel production. And 
fuel cells powered by green hydrogen or other storage 
mechanisms could help stabilize and secure the grid as we scale 
up wind, solar, and geothermal.
    There is exciting and necessary research to conduct in the 
areas I have just described. And, of course, Federal R&D 
(research and development) programs may demonstrate that 
additional applications make sense. Across the board, 
challenges in hydrogen storage, transportation, durability, 
costs, and safety must be addressed. We must also be cognizant 
of the fact that the fossil fuel industry is lobbying for a 
different vision of our hydrogen future, a much more expansive 
one. As our colleagues on the House Committee on Oversight and 
Reform have highlighted recently, this is an industry that uses 
its wealth to deceive the American people about the nature of 
the climate crisis and the solutions we need. That is a fact. 
And as scientists and public servants, we have a duty to 
subject their claims to intense scrutiny. We are in a climate 
emergency, and we do not have time to waste this decade.
    When hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, I do not believe 
that we should call it clean. In areas where there are 
established, safe, widely available, and cost-effective ways to 
eliminate carbon emissions, we should not be trying to clear an 
uncertain path for hydrogen with public funds. We will have to 
be strategic and prioritize. And since we already need to 
deploy much more wind and solar just to power the grid, we 
should avoid wasting hydrogen in applications like vehicles and 
appliances that can run on renewable electricity directly and 
more efficiently.
    In my State of New York, industry is trying to sell major 
expansions of fossil gas infrastructure by promising a future 
conversion to hydrogen. Thankfully, our new Governor is not 
buying it. Utilities, meanwhile, which are already passing on 
outrageous costs to my constituents, want to use hydrogen to 
heat our homes. For people who struggle with energy poverty and 
injustice, that would raise costs even further. Efficiency and 
electrification using heat pumps would reduce those costs.
    As these examples show, questions of political economy 
cannot be artificially separated from our scientific research 
endeavors. There may be additional uses of hydrogen beyond what 
I have described that, in theory, can play a transitional role 
to a fully renewable future. But if we are going to safely 
explore those possibilities, surely we must also discuss the 
safeguards and planning capacities needed to actually ensure a 
transition rather than simply leaving it to the market. We need 
to address the risk of locking in fossil fuel infrastructure 
and of creating dangerous new path dependencies. And we must 
evaluate the potential impacts on communities not just at one 
point in the process but all along the hydrogen supply chain.
    If designed and deployed correctly, hydrogen can contribute 
to the growth of good, clean-energy jobs and help us limit 
global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is incredibly 
important that we meet this moment properly. We cannot afford 
to miss the mark.
    I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses 
assembled today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Bowman follows:]

    Good morning, and thank you to all of our witnesses who are 
joining us virtually today to discuss the importance of clean 
hydrogen research. This is a timely topic, one that has quickly 
risen to the center of energy policymaking and debate. There is 
no doubt that hydrogen can play a valuable role in our national 
and global decarbonization efforts. But crucial questions and 
uncertainties remain, and our work on this committee can help 
resolve them.
    In setting the stage for this hearing, I would like to 
offer a few thoughts that I believe can help guide us. And I 
welcome further discussion with those who may disagree with 
some aspects of my perspective.
    Current hydrogen production methods are very carbon 
intensive, and are responsible for 830 million metric tons of 
carbon dioxide per year--the equivalent of the annual CO2 
emissions of the United Kingdom and Indonesia combined. We must 
complement our excitement about hydrogen's potential with 
caution, and care.
    In my view, when it is made from 100% renewable 
electricity, using a process called electrolysis, what is known 
as ``green hydrogen'' has the potential to make a crucial, but 
targeted contribution to meeting our climate goals.
    We can replace the polluting forms of hydrogen that are 
currently used in certain industrial processes. Green hydrogen 
could be one of the keys to decarbonizing difficult sectors 
like long-haul shipping, aviation, and steel production. And 
fuel cells powered by green hydrogen, or other storage 
mechanisms, could help stabilize and secure the grid as we 
scale up wind, solar, and geothermal power.
    There is exciting and necessary research to conduct in the 
areas I have just described. And of course, federal R&D 
programs may demonstrate that additional applications make 
sense. Across the board, challenges in hydrogen storage, 
transportation, durability, costs, and safety must be 
addressed.
    We must also be cognizant of the fact that the fossil fuel 
industry is lobbying for a different vision of our hydrogen 
future--a much more expansive one. As our colleagues on the 
House Committee on Oversight and Reform have been highlighting 
recently, this is an industry that uses its wealth to deceive 
the American people about the nature of the climate crisis and 
the solutions we need. That is a fact. And as scientists and 
public servants, we must subject their claims to intensive 
scrutiny.
    We are in a climate emergency, and we do not have time to 
waste this decade. When hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, I 
do not believe that we should call it clean. In areas where 
there are established, safe, widely-available, and cost-
effective ways to eliminate carbon emissions, we should not be 
trying to clear an uncertain path for hydrogen with public 
funds. We will have to be strategic, and prioritize. And since 
we already need to deploy much more wind and solar just to 
power the grid, we should avoid wasting hydrogen in 
applications like vehicles and appliances that can run on 
renewable electricity directly-and more efficiently.
    In my state of New York, industry is trying to sell major 
expansions of fossil gas infrastructure by promising a future 
conversion to hydrogen. Thankfully, our new Governor is not 
buying it. Utilities, meanwhile, which are already passing on 
outrageous costs to my constituents, want to use hydrogen to 
heat our homes. For people who struggle with energy poverty and 
injustice, that would raise costs even further. Efficiency and 
electrification using heat pumps would reduce those costs.
    As these examples show, questions of political economy 
cannot be artificially separated from our scientific research 
endeavors. There may be additional uses of hydrogen beyond what 
I have described that, in theory, can play a transitional role 
to a fully renewable future. But if we are going to safely 
explore those possibilities, surely we must also discuss the 
safeguards and planning capacities needed to actually ensure a 
transition--rather than simply leaving it to the market. We 
need to address the risks of locking in fossil fuel 
infrastructure, and of creating dangerous new path 
dependencies. And we must evaluate the potential impacts on 
communities not just at one point in the process, but all along 
the hydrogen supply chain.
    If designed and deployed correctly, hydrogen can contribute 
to the growth of good, clean energy jobs, and help us limit 
global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is incredibly 
important that we meet this moment properly. We cannot afford 
to miss the mark.
    I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses 
assembled today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony.

    Chairman Bowman. With that, I now recognize Mr. Weber for 
an opening statement.
    I believe Mr. Weber is not here.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Lucas to make an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairman Bowman.
    As Ranking Member of the Science Committee, I've long 
emphasized the importance of investing in American innovation 
to advance the next generation of clean energy, to export 
clean-energy technologies, and to ensure that--the long-term 
independence of the U.S. energy sector. This means taking and 
all-of-the-above approach that embraces a wide range of energy 
sources like renewables, advanced nuclear, research into the 
cleaner more efficient use of fossil fuels.
    Today, we have an opportunity to examine the status of 
hydrogen energy research in the United States, a key technology 
area that could leverage and strengthen many aspects of this 
diverse energy portfolio. In recent years, we've all seen the 
global push for hydrogen. Hydrogen energy technologies have the 
potential to diversify exportable abundant and clean, and they 
hold great promise for the U.S. energy sector and its work 
force.
    For example, in Oklahoma it is projected that hydrogen 
economy would add more than 6,000 jobs and provide economic 
benefits between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion for the State. 
Oklahoma is home to diverse energy resources like natural gas, 
wind energy, extensive pipeline networks, carbon sequestration 
facilities, geothermal, and premier hydrogen end-use potential. 
We are well-positioned to lead the way in advancing next-
generation hydrogen energy technologies.
    But today, many challenges remain on the path to their 
commercial success, and we must address these through strategic 
investment in both public-private partnerships and fundamental 
research programs. On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) 
announced two RFIs (requests for information) to inform how 
they can implement $9.5 billion in hydrogen initiatives 
authorized by the infrastructure bill. I agree with my 
colleague Mr. Weber. This is an unprecedented expansion. The 
Department of Energy has a huge task ahead of them. They need 
to do this right both to effectively build out our hydrogen 
technologies and to meet our responsibilities to the American 
taxpayer.
    It's our job on the Science Committee to monitor and guide 
these kinds of investments. I look forward to continuing to 
work with my friends across the aisle on comprehensive DOE 
hydrogen research legislation that will provide necessary 
structure and long-term direction for this growth.
    I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today and 
for outlining their vision to make affordable hydrogen energy a 
reality for the next generation. Thank you, Chairman Bowman, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

    Thank you, Chairman Bowman.
    As Ranking Member of the Science Committee, I have long 
emphasized the importance of investing in American innovation 
to advance the next generation of clean energy, to export clean 
energy technologies, and to ensure the long term independence 
of the
    U.S. energy sector. This means taking an all-of-the-above 
approach that embraces a wide range of energy sources like 
renewables, advanced nuclear, and research into the cleaner and 
more efficient use of fossil fuels.
    Today, we have an opportunity to examine the status of 
hydrogen energy research in the United States--a key technology 
area that could leverage and strengthen many aspects of this 
diverse energy portfolio.
    In recent years, we've all seen the global push for 
hydrogen. Hydrogen energy technologies have the potential to be 
versatile, exportable, abundant, and clean--and they hold great 
promise for the U.S. energy sector and its workforce.
    For example, in Oklahoma it is projected that a hydrogen 
economy could add more than 6,000 jobs and provide economic 
benefits between $1.5--$2.5 billion dollars for the state. 
Oklahoma is home to diverse energy resources like natural gas, 
wind energy, extensive pipeline networks, carbon sequestration 
facilities, geothermal, and premier hydrogen end-use potential. 
We are well-positioned to lead the way in advancing next- 
generation hydrogen energy technologies.
    But today, many challenges remain on the path to their 
commercial success, and we must address these through strategic 
investments in both public-private partnerships and fundamental 
research programs.
    On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced two RFIs to 
inform how they implement $9.5 billion dollars in hydrogen 
initiatives authorized by the infrastructure bill. As my 
colleague Mr. Weber said, this is an unprecedented expansion. 
The Department of Energy has a huge task ahead of them. They 
need to do this right--both to effectively build out our 
hydrogen technologies and to meet their responsibilities to the 
American taxpayer. It's our job on the Science Committee to 
monitor and guide these kinds of investments. I look forward to 
continuing to work with my friends across the aisle on 
comprehensive DOE hydrogen research legislation that will 
provide necessary structure and long-term direction for this 
growth.
    I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today, 
and for outlining their vision to make affordable hydrogen 
energy a reality for the next generation. Thank you, Chairman 
Bowman, I yield back the balance of my time.

    Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas.
    [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning and thank you, Chairman Bowman, for holding 
today's hearing on R&D priorities to advance the U.S.'s 
hydrogen economy.
    This week marks the anniversary of the 2021 Texas blackout, 
caused by an extreme winter storm event that led to a massive 
electricity generation failure in my home state. The event 
resulted in a loss of power for more than 4.5 million homes, 
leaving millions of people without heat and water in frigid 
temperatures. The blackout brought needed attention to our 
nation's energy infrastructure, and a year later we are still 
examining solutions to strengthen the electrical grid against 
future adverse weather conditions. This hearing is timely 
because some experts point to hydrogen as being uniquely suited 
to offer multipurpose, long duration, low-carbon energy storage 
solutions that will enhance the resilience, flexibility, and 
reliability of our power generation.
    I look forward to learning more about hydrogen's potential 
to improve the stability of the grid, and about the many other 
applications of these technologies. That said, while I welcome 
an energy future where hydrogen will power the hardest to 
decarbonize sectors, this committee cannot overlook the 
challenges that must be overcome to enable hydrogen's widescale 
deployment. These barriers include hydrogen production costs, 
bulk storage, transportation and distribution, and 
environmental and safety considerations.
    In support of this effort, DOE under the Biden 
Administration launched its Hydrogen Energy Earthshot last 
year-an effort to set ambitious targets to make key clean 
hydrogen technologies affordable in the next decade. The 
Hydrogen Energy Earthshot sets a goal to reduce the cost of 
hydrogen to one dollar per one kilogram of clean hydrogen in 
ten years, and I look forward to our panel of witnesses 
discussing how the United States will achieve this goal.
    Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not also mention the $8 
billion included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill to 
support the development of four clean hydrogen hubs across the 
United States to further the production, processing, delivery, 
storage, and end-use of clean hydrogen. This Committee is 
charged with providing Congressional oversight of DOE's entire 
energy R&D portfolio. So we have an important role to play in 
ensuring the success of these hubs as they help to chart 
hydrogen's place in our nation's cleaner energy future.
    I want to thank this excellent panel of witnesses from our 
National Laboratories, academia, the environmental justice 
community, and industry for joining today's hearing. This panel 
reflects the many partnerships needed to spur innovation in the 
next generation of energy technologies. I am eager for today's 
discussion to serve as a blueprint for our committee's future 
legislation in this important area.
    With that I yield back.

     [The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]

    Thank you, Chairman Bowman.
    When it comes to the future of clean energy, hydrogen is 
one of the most exciting and widely discussed topics. And for 
good reason: it is clean, abundantly available, adaptable to 
multiple industries, and versatile for use with other fuel 
sources and current infrastructure. That is why we are 
currently seeing unprecedented levels of investment and 
interest in hydrogen energy production.
    The Department of Energy carries out hydrogen R&D 
activities primarily through its Hydrogen and Fuel Cell 
Technologies Office. As a part of the Infrastructure Investment 
and Jobs Act, DOE has been directed to spend approximately $9.5 
billion for the advancement of hydrogen as an energy source.
    The vast majority of that pot of money, $8 billion, is 
reserved for the establishment of at least four regional 
hydrogen hubs, which I know will be a major topic of discussion 
this morning. While I didn't support the infrastructure bill 
because of the Trillions of dollars of new spending and the tax 
increases on American families, I do agree that we need to 
invest in hydrogen R&D. That said, $8 billion for regional 
hydrogen hubs is a massive expansion.
    In FY21, the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office had 
a budget of just $150 million, which means funding for these 
regional hubs will increase funding for these activities by 
more than a factor of 50. And by the way--if we can get $8 
billion dollars for these hubs, can we get some funding for the 
Versatile Test Reactor? If electric vehicles are 
infrastructure, then surely VTRs are too!
    Regardless, we need to ensure that these massive 
investments in regional hydrogen hubs produce results that 5can 
be used in a way that benefits the American taxpayer. While I'm 
optimistic that these hubs will be successful, I am concerned 
that such a large expansion leaves us vulnerable to inefficient 
spending. Scaling up programs like this is not easy, and I'm 
also concerned that critical research and development 
activities will fall behind.
    Putting our all our eggs in one basket could leave us in a 
scenario where hydrogen's ultimate widespread deployment is 
stalled by the need for more research. DOE needs to be active 
in this space, supporting robust R&D programs and activities, 
including at the fundamental and basic research level to 
complement, or even complete, the work done at these hubs.
    Through a coordinated, cross-cutting effort with the 
Offices of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil 
Energy, Nuclear Energy, Electricity, ARPA-E, and the Office of 
Science, DOE is uniquely positioned to advance key components 
of affordable production, transport, storage, and use of clean 
hydrogen across different sectors. But in order to do that 
effectively, we need to update and modernize the scope of DOE's 
hydrogen research and development activities.
    The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office was last 
authorized in 2005 and the authorizing language focuses on a 
narrow range of application areas. Think about how much your 
phone has modernized in the last 15 years! That is why I am 
pleased we are close to finalizing legislation that provides 
strong support and long-term guidance for hydrogen research, 
development, and demonstration at DOE.
    We need to make sure the U.S. research enterprise isn't 
simply reacting to discoveries, they are driving them and 
staying at the forefront of what's next.
    I am hopeful that today's hearing will inform the final 
steps to producing this legislation. I want to thank my 
colleagues for their bipartisan work on this issue and look 
forward to the discussion.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my 
time.

    Chairman Bowman. At this time, I would like to introduce 
our witnesses. Mr. Keith Wipke--sorry, Mr. Keith Wipke--is a 
Laboratory Program Manager for the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen 
Technologies Program at the National Renewable Energy 
Laboratory (NREL), where he worked since 1993. The program 
covers all aspects of hydrogen and fuel cells from hydrogen 
production with renewables to end-use applications.
    Dr. Julio Friedmann is Chief Scientist and Head Carbon 
Wrangler at Carbon Direct. Prior to this role, he was a Senior 
Research Scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy at 
Columbia University where he led the Carbon Management Research 
Initiative. He has held leadership roles at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.
    Ms. Rachel Fakhry is a Senior Advocate at Natural Resources 
Defense Council (NRDC). She leads the Hydrogen and Energy 
Innovation Portfolio at NRDC and designs policy and regulatory 
frameworks to leverage the technology's potential to support 
decarbonization goals--excuse me--as well as internalize the 
guardrails necessary to mitigate its risk. She is also the 
green hydrogen sector lead for the U.N. High Level Climate 
Champions where she leads the organization's global strategy in 
this area.
    Dr. Tomas Diaz de la Rubio--Rubia, excuse me, is the Vice 
President for Research and Partnerships at the University of 
Oklahoma (OU). Prior to this role, Dr. Diaz de la Rubia was the 
Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President for 
Strategic Initiatives at Purdue University. He has also held 
senior roles at Deloitte Consulting and Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory.
    And last but certainly not least, Mr. Sheldon Kimber is 
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Intersect Power, a 
developer of utility-scale renewables. In his prior role as COO 
(Chief Operating Officer) of Recurrent Energy, he led the 
company's development, engineering, procurement, construction, 
and operations activities globally. He also holds an MBA 
(Master of Business Administration) from UC (University of 
California) Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he 
teaches project finance in the MBA program.
    Thank you all for joining us today. As our witnesses should 
know, you will each have 5 minutes for your spoken testimony. 
Your written testimony will be included in the record for the 
hearing. When you all have completed your spoken testimony, we 
will begin with questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to 
question the panel. We will start with Mr. Wipke.

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. KEITH WIPKE,

               LABORATORY PROGRAM MANAGER AT NREL

    Mr. Wipke. Ranking Member Lucas, Chairman Bowman, Ranking 
Member Weber, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 
this opportunity to discuss the state of hydrogen research and 
development in the United States. I'm Keith Wipke, and I've 
been with National Renewable Energy for 29 years and have led 
our fuel zone hydrogen technologies program for almost a 
decade. I would like to highlight hydrogen's opportunities and 
research challenges, how the national labs are addressing these 
to benefit our country, and the continued research investments 
needed.
    Throughout the world, hydrogen is increasingly recognized 
as a critical central complement for a clean, sustainable, 
efficient, and economic energy system. Hydrogen is remarkable 
for its ability to carry, store, and convert energy to connect 
sectors that are harder to electrify or decarbonize. This 
chemical energy can be converted to products and fuels used to 
generate electricity and heat or stored to enable larger-scale 
deployment and use of renewable electricity. The U.S. 
Department of Energy's H2@Scale vision embodies the tremendous 
opportunities hydrogen presents for transforming our energy 
system, the major challenges for hydrogen-related cost, scale, 
durability, and manufacturability. Widespread deployment of 
hydrogen will require cost reductions as current large-scale 
clean production costs are $5 to $6 a kilogram or higher.
    DOE's Hydrogen Shot initiative seeks to reduce the costs by 
80 percent to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen in a decade, which 
would unlock new markets for hydrogen, including steel 
manufacturing, clean ammonia, energy storage, and zero-emission 
heavy-duty trucks.
    The growth of electrolyzer deployments in the United States 
has been modest compared to the rapid scaleup elsewhere. By 
accelerating its activities in support for large deployment, 
the United States has an opportunity to lead the world in 
creating and domestically manufacturing technologies that 
provide cost-competitive clean hydrogen. This real-world 
experience will feedback into the R&D cycle and continue to 
drive costs down. Electrolyzer systems that produce hydrogen 
are commercially available today but are fabricated at low 
volumes and not sufficiently affordable, durable, or efficient 
to be deployed at large-scale in our grid. And for hydrogen-
powered long-haul trucks with million-mile lifetimes, the 
industry needs efficient fuel cell systems that are four to 
five times more durable.
    DOE's hydrogen program is taking an all-hands-on-deck 
approach to achieve the Hydrogen Shot goal. The hydrogen 
community, especially our national laboratories, is pulling 
together to address worldwide challenges. The Nation's crown 
jewels of research staff and experimental capabilities reside 
in our national lab system. Unique expertise and facilities 
developed to help commercialize fuel cell cars are now being 
leveraged to further develop hydrogen technologies. DOE's 
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of 
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is advancing R&D through 
multi-lab consortia on hydrogen production, fuel cells, 
storage, and blending hydrogen with natural gas. The Office of 
Science's Basic Energy Sciences program supports fundamental 
research in electrochemistry, materials science, and chemical 
science to improve our understanding and development of new 
hydrogen technologies.
    NREL, Idaho National Laboratory, and the National Energy 
Technology Laboratory are collaborating to conduct research and 
analysis on integrated energy systems incorporating renewable, 
nuclear, and fossil energy. And NREL has launched a major 
initiative with support from DOE called ARIES, or Advanced 
Research on Integrated Energy Systems, to match the complexity 
of the modern energy system.
    Private-sector partnerships are one of the most important 
pathways to reach our country's carbon reduction goals and 
maintain competitive advantage and innovation. Industry 
provides the market drivers and means to scale up laboratory 
innovations into domestic products and jobs. Significant 
national investments like those we've seen recently will 
accelerate development of hydrogen technologies and provide the 
opportunity for U.S. market leadership internationally. A 
combination of longer-term and higher-risk R&D with big 
payoffs, balanced with near-term demonstrations and deployments 
of existing technologies, will accelerate the market, provide 
feedback on remaining research challenges, and keep the 
innovation pipeline flowing.
    There are still key research opportunities to develop 
advanced hydrogen production techniques that can take advantage 
of renewable and nuclear power or use solar energy directly, 
and further development is needed to integrate hydrogen into 
new applications such as making net-zero CO2 
chemicals and liquid fuels. Investments in hydrogen R&D will 
provide significant national security, economic, and 
environmental benefits to our country. National lab research is 
lowering the cost and increasing the scale of technologies to 
make, move, store, and use hydrogen across multiple energy 
sectors.
    NREL's vision supports leading an energy transition in 
which solutions are inclusively designed and benefits are 
equitably distributed. Clean hydrogen can be made anywhere 
there is clean electricity, enabling renewable power jobs for 
rural America while cleaning up the air in cities for those who 
often suffer from the worst air quality. We look forward to 
continued innovation, and thank you for your support.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Wipke follows:]


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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Wipke.
    Dr. Friedmann is now recognized.

               TESTIMONY OF DR. JULIO FRIEDMANN,

            CHIEF SCIENTIST AND HEAD CARBON WRANGLER

                        AT CARBON DIRECT

    Dr. Friedmann. Thank you very much, Chairman Bowman, 
Ranking Member Weber, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of both 
the Full and Subcommittee. Thank you so much for inviting me 
here today. My name is Dr. Julio Friedmann. I am the Chief 
Scientist at Carbon Direct, a science-based firm that works 
with partners to make carbon reductions and carbon removals 
real. It is an honor to appear before this Committee to discuss 
the status of hydrogen technology, as well as key RD&D 
(research, development, and deployment) priorities and 
strategies for innovation and investment. You have my written 
testimony, which cites my work at Columbia University and 
others. I will focus on a subset in my oral testimony.
    In short, the world is coming on fast. The investment of 
major volumes of money, shifting policy landscapes everywhere 
from Japan to Europe to Chile are changing the way the world 
thinks about hydrogen and how it will be used today and in the 
future. The United States can lead in innovation and in speed 
to market. That's our superpower. We have just passed 
legislation with unprecedented funding. That funding should be 
used with a deployment focused around innovation, not a 
discovery focus. We should include work on existing assets, as 
well as assets yet to be built. We should focus on 
infrastructure and infrastructure design, planning, and 
finance, as well as core innovations. In short, there's lots of 
room to innovate, many ways to reduce cost, many ways to 
improve performance. I detailed these in my written testimony.
    A few brief words about supply side. If we're going to make 
hydrogen, it should be low-carbon hydrogen. The focus should be 
on carbon emissions. It's not a question of blue, green, or 
bio. If you're tall enough to go on this ride, that means you 
have a very low lifecycle carbon index. That should include 
emissions, as well as produced emissions, as well as embodied 
emissions. We can have low or even subzero carbon intensities 
if we keep our eye on that goal.
    We should invest in novel processes, on a pure green 
hydrogen play. New membranes, membrane-less technology, photo 
catalysis, microbial pathways, and more provide really great 
opportunities for more supply at lower cost. That, however, is 
not the only way to make super-low carbon hydrogen. Waste 
biomass to hydrogen is born zero. Pyrolysis, gasifiers, other 
pathways can make it. If we focus carefully on that again, we 
can make hydrogen with a subzero carbon footprint.
    Novel pathways like high temperature water cracking from 
high temperature nuclear cycles like sulfur iodine or methane 
pyrolysis also hold promise. Most people think just about the 
modules. I will encourage you to think at a slightly larger 
scale. Improved materials and efficiencies are great and 
important, but we should be thinking about the balance of 
systems cost, how to integrate with the grid, advances in 
manufacturing for hydrogen production as well.
    As important as supply is, the use is where the action is. 
We need way more focus in our industrial ecosystem and 
innovation on use of clean hydrogen, in particular in heavy 
industry and hard-to-abate sectors, steel, chemicals, cement, 
glass. Maybe we want to just throw hydrogen into a blast 
furnace. I kind of doubt it. We should be thinking more about 
how exactly we are going to use these things in existing assets 
and new ones that include something that Dr. Wipke mentioned, 
the creation of synthetic fuels, ammonia, circular methanol, 
advanced aviation fuels, and so forth, as well as applications 
in long-duration storage.
    A few key topics in and around innovation deserves special 
attention. One of those is the risks of hydrogen leakage. Right 
now, hydrogen is monitored for safety. That's a couple of 
percent per year of leakage risk. We need to do better than 
that. We should be looking at subfraction of a percent. We 
should be looking at something like .5 percent annual leakage 
or less. That is a way to ensure safety to communities, as well 
as good climate outcomes.
    Second, we need to focus on human capital. There are just 
not enough human beings today in this arena, not to innovate, 
start companies, make patents, manufacture, or meet the rapidly 
growing demand. We will just need more.
    Finally, we should focus on setting standards for the 
production of clean hydrogen and clear definitions of what that 
should mean. Those definitions are in--are that the requirement 
to make those definitions is in IIJA (Infrastructure Investment 
and Jobs Act). Hopefully, we will see the Department of Energy 
deliver those soon.
    There are good roles for many DOE offices and national 
labs, also for universities and companies, also for other 
government agencies, NSF (National Science Foundation), NIST 
(National Institute of Standards and Technology), EPA 
(Environmental Protection Agency), Department of Defense, 
Labor, Department of Transportation, and others. I look forward 
to taking your questions to dive into some of these details.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Friedmann follows:]


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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Friedmann.
    Ms. Fakhry is now recognized.

        TESTIMONY OF MS. RACHEL FAKHRY, SENIOR ADVOCATE

              AT NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL

    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Chair Bowman, Ranking Member Lucas, 
Ranking Member Weber, and Members of the Full and Subcommittee. 
Thank you for having me here today. This is exactly the sort of 
informed deliberation we need at such a critical time in 
hydrogen's development. My name is Rachel Fakhry, and I lead 
the hydrogen work at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
    The targeted deployment of green hydrogen presents exciting 
opportunities for climate progress, public health, and quality 
jobs. The main question we should be addressing today is how 
can we best steward taxpayers' dollars to advance hydrogen in 
the most efficient and beneficial way? I'll focus on three key 
points.
    First, green hydrogen technology offers a great opportunity 
to support our climate goals and propel the United States to 
the forefront of the global clean-energy innovation race. But 
we must be acutely sensitive to hydrogen's serious risks, which 
will require robust safeguards to avoid burdening Americans 
with high energy costs, damaging air pollution, and 
jeopardizing climate progress.
    Finally, parts of DOE's hydrogen program need re-
examination. Congress can and should direct DOE to set new 
priorities to meet hydrogen's emerging challenges. To my first 
point, and as my fellow witnesses have stated, hydrogen can 
replace fossil fuels in sectors of the economy with few other 
clean alternatives, including maritime shipping, aviation, and 
steelmaking. Therefore, green hydrogen can play a key role in 
helping us achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas global economy by 
2050. DOE is uniquely positioned to lead in driving technology 
forward at a critical point in our fight against the climate 
crisis.
    However, it is also vitally important that we recognize 
that hydrogen technology has serious risks that require 
safeguards and caution. Hydrogen must be used sparingly because 
its production and use are energy-intensive. For example, it 
could require up to five times more electricity to heat a home 
with hydrogen than an efficient heat pump. This means that 
hydrogen is largely an ill-advised and costly solution outside 
of those challenging sectors with limited alternatives. 
Shoehorning hydrogen into sectors with more affordable clean-
energy alternatives risk saddling Americans with costly 
solutions and complicating the task of decarbonizing our 
economy.
    Hydrogen production requires rigorous safeguards to ensure 
it's actually clean, as Dr. Friedmann said. Even emerging 
production pathways touted as clean, they admit dangerous 
amounts of greenhouse gases. It is critical that all Federal 
funding be exclusively allocated to hydrogen projects that can 
verifiably demonstrate very low carbon intensities and no 
harmful pollution impacts. But we already know that zero 
emissions, green hydrogen has the most potential for cost 
reductions and is the resource most strictly aligned with U.S. 
long-term goals for protecting our climates and the health of 
our communities.
    We also need more research on the climate and public health 
impacts of hydrogen transport, storage, and use, as Dr. 
Friedmann alluded to. And until we better understand those, we 
should approach hydrogen investments with caution. For example, 
when burned, hydrogen can produce worse air pollution than 
methane gas.
    This brings me to my final point. DOE's portfolio has 
delivered commendable successes, but hydrogen's role in the 
economy is significantly shifting, and it's time for Congress 
to direct DOE to set new priorities to advance the technology 
in a no-regrets manner.
    We have three primary recommendations. One, recognizing 
that there has been incredible advancement in clean-energy 
solutions like renewable energy and electrification. DOE must 
better tease out hydrogen's unique role in pathways to net zero 
by 2050. This should be the very bedrock for making hydrogen 
investments and would foster optimal stewardship of taxpayer 
money.
    Two, DOE's work should only prioritize the advancement of 
green hydrogen in those hard-to-electrify sectors. DOE should 
also phase down work on hydrogen applications that can be 
served by more affordable clean alternatives such as buildings 
and passenger cars. This strategic focus is necessary, given 
the short time window to 2050. It would also propel the United 
States to the forefront of clean-energy innovation, bolster our 
competitive edge globally, and support U.S. ambitions to become 
a hydrogen exporter.
    And finally, DOE should investigate the climate impact of 
hydrogen leakage across its value chain and air pollution 
impacts of hydrogen use and develop necessary solutions to 
mitigate them.
    Thank you, and we look forward to working with you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Fakhry follows:]


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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much, Ms. Fakhry.
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia, you're now recognized.

            TESTIMONY OF DR. TOMAS DIAZ DE LA RUBIA,

          VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIPS

                 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Thank you, Subcommittee Chairman 
Bowman, Ranking Member Lucas, Subcommittee Ranking Member 
Weber, and other Members of the Committee. Thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today. I am Tomas Diaz de la Rubia, Vice 
President for Research and Partnerships at the University of 
Oklahoma. As Chairman Bowman mentioned, prior to this position, 
I spent the first part of my career at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory, one of the DOE's 17 national laboratories, 
serving in various roles, including Executive Director for 
Science and Technology and Chief Research Officer. These 
experiences, I believe, have given me important insights on 
public-private partnerships, innovation, and work force 
development that are relevant to today's topic, the future of 
hydrogen to advance clean energy and climate goals.
    Cost remains a major obstacle for advancing economically 
viable, clean hydrogen. On June 7, 2021, DOE announced an 
ambitious goal through its Hydrogen EarthShot to reduce the 
cost of hydrogen by 80 percent to $1 a kilogram in just 10 
years. At present, clean hydrogen produced using renewables, 
for example, costs about five times the DOE goal. The 
bipartisan American Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress 
in November 2021 has made a significant investment in hydrogen. 
Basic investments such as these are critical and essential. 
However, they alone are not sufficient to meet DOE's cost goals 
and overcome significant barriers to clean hydrogen development 
and deployment.
    Scientific breakthroughs are still needed to advance 
hydrogen technologies that do not meet carbon dioxide and are 
carbon-neutral. A focused and dedicated DOE Office of Science 
support for a fundamental research program could accelerate 
innovation and directly support planned DOE applied research, 
demonstration, and deployment activities.
    I recommend the creation of a hydrogen and fuel cell 
innovation center, modeled after the DOE's Energy Innovation 
Hubs. The center could be modeled after those hubs such as 
those in energy storage, solar fuels, desalination, and nuclear 
reactor modeling. Several key attributes that have made those 
centers successful include tackling a specific energy grand 
challenge over a period of 5 to 10 years; clear and measurable 
metrics; assembling multidisciplinary, multi-institutional 
teams from DOE national labs, research universities, and the 
private sector; and addressing the science, engineering, and 
technology challenges simultaneously.
    While a dedicated fundamental research program will address 
the scientific challenges and develop the future of the clean 
hydrogen work force, the proposed center will also be, 
importantly, a bridge between new discoveries and the clean-
energy demonstration hubs proposed in the infrastructure bill. 
This is a gap that must be filled. Regional diversity and 
strong public-private partnerships are also essential for the 
successful and sustained deployment of clean hydrogen 
technologies.
    In early 2021, Governor and the State legislature created 
the Hydrogen Production Transportation and Infrastructure Task 
Force in Oklahoma, and I had the privilege of serving as Co-
Chair of the Subcommittee on Hydrogen Production. The task 
force delivered a comprehensive report to the Governor that was 
published in December 2021, and in this report, the task force 
found that Oklahoma, as Ranking Member Lucas mentioned earlier, 
has inherent advantages that position it as a future regional 
leader in the hydrogen economy. Oklahoma ranks fifth in the 
Nation in natural gas production and is the Nation's third-
largest producer of renewable electricity from wind. In 
addition, Oklahoma, along with its regional partners, has 
extensive natural gas and hydrogen pipeline infrastructure; a 
highly skilled oil, gas, and renewable energy work force; low-
cost electricity; access to abundant water sources; abundant 
CO2 and hydrogen-ready geologic pore space; and 
many, many companies are already engaging in the hydrogen 
economy supply chain, including, importantly, its end use.
    In conclusion, States like Oklahoma and our regional 
partners are well-positioned to advance a clean-energy hydrogen 
economy. I want to thank the Members of the Committee for 
advancing new Federal opportunities in hydrogen in the American 
Infrastructure and Jobs Act such as the hydrogen hubs and 
related research and development activities. In Oklahoma, we 
are bringing together a broad regional coalition of 
stakeholders from State and local governments, academia, 
national laboratories, tribal nations, nonprofits, and local 
communities. As the Committee looks for additional 
opportunities to help advance a hydrogen economy, I'd recommend 
legislation that establishes a dedicated use-inspired 
fundamental research program to advance carbon-neutral hydrogen 
through a hydrogen and fuel cell innovation center that will 
tackle the hardest science and technology challenges and 
coordinate activities across the innovation spectrum. Thank you 
for your strong support and interest in this critical energy 
topic.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Diaz de la Rubia follows:]

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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Diaz de la Rubia, for your 
comments.
    Mr. Kimber, you are now recognized.

                TESTIMONY OF MR. SHELDON KIMBER,

             CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER

                       OF INTERSECT POWER

    Mr. Kimber. Thank you. I want to thank the Chairman, the 
Ranking Member, and the Committee for the invitation to appear 
today.
    This Committee's focus on clean hydrogen is both 
appropriate and timely as the historic affordability and 
availability of clean power is beginning to unlock hydrogen's 
long-awaited potential. This is an enormous opportunity for our 
Nation, but we need the help of government to capture it.
    Clean hydrogen is a game-changing technology that will 
reduce the cost and increase the pace of our transition to a 
decarbonized economy. Converting to electric power sources from 
combustion sources is a critical step. But electrification 
alone will not decarbonize many heavy-duty carbon-intensive 
sectors of the economy.
    This is why clean hydrogen is so critical. Clean hydrogen 
also empowers local economies that depend on today's fossil 
fuel industry to benefit from the expanding energy transition. 
Several rural areas of the United States hold enormous 
potential for clean hydrogen, particularly Texas and Oklahoma, 
which seems to be getting quite a bit of attention in this 
hearing. These States have abundant wind and solar generation 
potential, a vast network of pipeline infrastructure, and a 
qualified work force. I believe that they are poised to become 
the Permian basin of clean hydrogen.
    But part of their ability to do so will be driven by cost. 
The DOE's Hydrogen EarthShot initiative is focused on low-cost 
clean hydrogen in the next decade, and I applaud the 
establishment for the electrolysis program included in the 
infrastructure bill. But in addition to electrolyzer technology 
advances, the key to cost reduction will really be the rapid 
deployment at massive scale. In fact, it is the rapid scaling 
of the solar industry, particularly the cost-effective abundant 
clean power that it provides, that is unlocking the long-
awaited potential of clean hydrogen itself. We've seen this 
with wind, we have seen this with solar, and we've seen this 
with batteries. And electrolyzer technology can and should be 
next.
    The research investments of the past have already given us 
many of the tools we need to build a clean hydrogen economy. I 
believe what is missing now are the first large-scale 
deployments of already-existing technologies. These initial 
large projects will drive down costs as manufacturing scales 
up.
    As one of the leading American developers of clean-energy 
resources, my company is in conversations with natural gas 
pipelines, local distribution companies, and end users, and 
they all want lower carbon fuels in the pipes. Demand for 
carbon emissions reductions through voluntary corporate 
commitments sets up a unique opportunity for DOE to connect 
demand with deployment. DOE can help put hydrogen in these 
pipelines through large-scale projects like by grant funding 
and regulatory coordination. This targeted approach can begin 
to build the bridge between clean energy and an incumbent 
fossil fuel industry.
    In my view, deployment should be accelerated by DOE in 
three specific ways. First, this emerging industry needs clear 
and defensible carbon accounting guidance. With this in place, 
the right market signals will exist to offer voluntary markets 
new options to decarbonize. This approach should consider the 
carbon impact of the full fuel lifecycle, including onsite 
emissions from hydrogen generation, as well as upstream 
feedstock production.
    Second, we must ensure that DOE's hydrogen hubs encourage 
large-scale hydrogen production focused on industrial processes 
or pipelines and not focus purely on transportation. 
Decarbonizing today's consumers of fossil fuel-based hydrogen 
primarily in refining and ammonia production is one of the 
best-use cases for green hydrogen as a decarbonization lever.
    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, blending clean 
hydrogen into the national gas pipeline system will leverage 
the billions of dollars in private capital that have already 
been invested there. This must start by rapidly testing and 
validating the safety of hydrogen blending into existing pipes. 
This work will be critical to providing the regulatory 
certainty for pipeline companies and asset developers alike to 
deploy private capital.
    In conclusion, DOE, with the backing of Congress, holds 
several keys to unlocking clean hydrogen's potential. Clean 
hydrogen is an opportunity for the United States to leverage 
its renewable resources and its conventional energy expertise 
into a leadership position in the energy transition. We cannot 
afford to cede this opportunity to other countries, as we have 
in other clean-energy technologies. The world will decarbonize 
with or without the U.S. Government, but what stands before us 
is the opportunity to lead, as we have in the past. It is the 
leadership--it is this leadership that has insured our position 
in the world through prior transitions, and continued 
leadership is required to maintain that position.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the 
Committee. I'm happy to answer questions that you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Kimber follows:]

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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Kimber.
    At this point, we will begin our first round of questions. 
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Fakhry, thank you for your testimony. One of your 
recommendations was that DOE take a more holistic approach to 
its hydrogen R&D portfolio by tacking it in connection to 
other--tackling it in connection to other solutions and to our 
overall climate goals. Can you elaborate on what that might 
look like? And should DOE be thinking about applying this 
approach in other arenas as well?
    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Chair. We have a short time window 
to 2050 to decarbonize our economy and achieve our net-zero 
greenhouse gas emission goals. And we still have quite a few 
clean-energy solutions to develop. So we need to be very 
strategic in how we spend our RD&D dollars over the next 10 
years, 20 years, and we need to focus on those solutions that 
are most likely going to play a major role in helping us 
achieve our goals and securing an affordable and reliable 
transition. And in order to do that, the DOE has to chart 
holistic pathways that get us to our goals of net zero 
efficiently, encompassing all technologies, both existing and 
under RD&D, and tease out RD&D priorities on this basis. And 
this very much applies to hydrogen. The DOE has to do a better 
job at teasing out its unique role relative to other solutions 
and established goals.
    Currently, the Department has a tendency to look at 
hydrogen in a more insular fashion. However, the good thing is 
this is changing. We are seeing great initiatives by the 
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, and we should 
encourage that. And absolutely, Chair Bowman, the DOE has to 
adopt this approach across its portfolio. We would like to see 
the Office of Policy work better with the technology offices in 
setting RD&D priorities that are collaboration across 
technology offices considering the need to carve out unique 
roles. And Congress should not only encourage such a 
collaboration but also provide dedicated funding and encourage 
the establishment of metrics and milestones to ensure tangible 
progress.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Wipke, electrolysis is currently the key process for 
producing hydrogen from 100 percent renewable energy. The 
current cost of hydrogen production using this method is about 
$5 per kilogram of hydrogen. This past summer, DOE launched a 
Hydrogen Shot seeking to reduce this cost by 80 percent to $1 
per kilogram within a decade. What is needed to reduce the cost 
of electrolysis in line with this goal?
    Mr. Wipke. So a number of things. And thank you for the 
question. First of all, today's electrolyzers have been made 
for high efficiency because they are using expensive 
electricity, and so they have more expensive materials, they're 
operating 24/7. So one of the things that's going to change and 
is changing is renewable power is coming down in cost, and that 
means you can more opportunistically use the electrolyzer. But 
that's also may be a different type of electrolyzer in terms of 
materials. They won't be operating as much efficiency, maybe 
not as important when you're turning it on and off and kind of 
just capturing these extra puffs of wind and rays of sunlight 
when they are available and extremely cheap. So the materials 
are evolving and may be different, so we're working on a number 
of things and catalysts, membranes, of course transport layers 
that essentially allow this newer use of electrolyzers to be 
more cost-effective and durable.
    Chairman Bowman. Would anyone else like to briefly comment 
on this? We only have a couple seconds left. Mr. Friedmann----
    Dr. Friedmann. Yes----
    Chairman Bowman. Dr. Friedmann, excuse me.
    Dr. Friedmann. Thank you. Two quick things. First, the best 
costs in the United States are on the order of $5. Average 
costs are actually much higher because you need firm, reliable 
electricity to get the job done. Getting that at an industrial 
contract with clean electricity is closer to $9 a kilogram in 
most parts of the country. I will say that in some parts of the 
country like Oklahoma that is not the case. You have cheap, 
abundant--clean electricity there, and it's much cheaper 
locally. So be clear that the price is not 5 bucks in the 
United States. The price is much higher in many jurisdictions.
    The other thing that I'll say is that, like Mr. Wipke said, 
you have to have high-capacity factors for these things today. 
Fifty-five percent of the cost is the electricity cost, but 30 
percent of the cost is the electrolyzer cost. We may be able to 
make low-cost electrolyzers, that would be great, but if not, 
the electrolyzer cost means you have to use these things a lot. 
Otherwise, you're wasting money.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much. The Chair now 
recognizes Mr. Weber for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for indulging me. 
We--I lost our power last night. My cell phone lost its charge, 
and so we were a little behind the 8-ball this morning. What do 
we do without cell phones? Maybe if we could get cell phones 
more efficient with hydrogen, that would help us all. What do 
you think?
    But in this discussion one of the things that we--that I 
actually have looked at was the fact that hydrogen R&D should 
be a crosscutting initiative at DOE. We--I think we kind of all 
take that for granted. One that leverages the expertise of all 
applied energy offices. DOE currently supports four hydrogen 
demonstration projects that will take place at commercial 
nuclear power plants. One of the hydrogen hubs we've been 
talking about will be required to use nuclear power. Obviously, 
the benefits of using nuclear to produce hydrogen are 
multifaceted, but let's just say several of them it's clear 
it's safe that are clear is it's safe, it's reliable, and it is 
a clean power source.
    With that as a backdrop, my question is, Mr. Wipke, we'll 
start with you. In your opinion, are advanced nuclear 
technologies like those supported through DOE's Office of 
Nuclear Energy in a position--good position I might add--to 
help overcome some of the R&D challenges associated with 
scalable hydrogen production?
    Mr. Wipke. Thank you for the question. And, first of all, I 
am not a nuclear power expert. I'm more on the renewable power. 
However, we work very closely with the Idaho National 
Laboratory and in their, you know, ties with any--and they have 
all the expertise in that area.
    I do believe, however, that we need to take an all-of-the-
above approach, and nuclear is an outstanding baseload zero-
carbon source for making hydrogen. And there's actually 
research being done on high-temperature electrolysis, and Idaho 
and others are leading in that area where you essentially get 
to use not only electricity but also the heat. And by elevating 
the temperature of that reaction, the amount of electricity is 
greatly reduced. So there's a lot of synergies by making 
hydrogen from nuclear that I think we really need to take 
advantage of.
    Mr. Weber. Right. Thank you. Dr. Friedmann, your thoughts?
    Dr. Friedmann. Nuclear has the advantage of being firm, 
low-carbon electricity, period. Firm, low-carbon electricity is 
a real asset in this arena. It is particularly valuable for the 
existing fleet. We have a lot of nuclear plants that are being 
curtailed at the level of 15 to 20 percent per year. Those 
electrons could be used today to make zero-carbon hydrogen. And 
if we can actually get novel reactors to have lower cost, then 
in point of fact they could be very competitive for making low-
carbon clean ammonia and hydrogen.
    Mr. Weber. Well, we--I'm glad to hear you're a proponent of 
nuclear. We could have a discussion, notwithstanding Mr. 
Wipke's comment that he's just an expert in renewables. We 
would argue that in fact nuclear is indeed a renewable.
    Mr. Wipke, let me come back to you. How is NREL 
coordinating with other national labs like Idaho National 
Laboratory, for example, to carry out this kind of crosscutting 
work?
    Mr. Wipke. Yes, so one of the major ways NREL and other 
labs are collaborating is through various DOE consortia. So 
there's one called H2NEW (Hydrogen from Next-generation 
Electrolyzers of Water), which is focused on advanced water 
splitting, and that includes the high temperature that we 
talked about, as well as low temperature for PEM (polymer 
electrolyte membrane) and alkaline. But there's also another 
one called HydroGEN, which is basically longer-term research 
and includes things like solar thermal chemical hydrogen 
production and photoelectrochemical water splitting where you 
directly shine sunlight on an advanced solar cell immersed in 
liquid and you make hydrogen and oxygen.
    So these are--I think it's really important to have a 
portfolio and have a good spectrum from low-tech--low-
technology-readiness level to more applied. Otherwise, when you 
deploy everything you have, the pipe ends up coming up dry. So 
you've got to keep the pipeline full of innovation.
    Mr. Weber. Well, I'm glad to hear that. I think I made 
myself clear, it's worth repeating, I strongly believe that in 
order for a U.S. hydrogen economy to be competitive, we have to 
support R&D and hydrogen production from a range of clean-
energy sources, keeping all the pathways on the table.
    Furthermore, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Mr. Kimber 
say that the pipeline system that we already have in place 
should be a usable facility. It brings to mind for me the old 
chicken-and-the-egg question. Do we want--I guess maybe it's a 
parallel path. We want to make sure that pipelines can handle 
that kind of product while we're doing the research on the 
product. So we're going to need a little buy-in from some folks 
across the country who aren't necessarily thrilled about 
pipelines, but it's worth it in our trek to--as Ms.--is it 
Fakhry--as she said, our trek to clean by 2050.
    So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my final second.
    Staff. Ms. Bonamici is recognized.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much to Chair Bowman and Ranking 
Members Weber and Lucas for this hearing. Thank you to the 
witnesses for your testimony and for bringing your expertise to 
this conversation.
    Many advocates of blue hydrogen, including the fossil fuel 
industry, argue that generating hydrogen through steam methane 
reforming with carbon capture is low emitting and clean. A 
recent report from researchers at Stanford and Cornell 
Universities examined blue hydrogen in heating and found that 
greenhouse gas emissions from burning blue hydrogen is 60 
percent higher than burning diesel for heat.
    So, Ms. Fakhry, will you please outline the costs and 
consequences both in public health and to our climate 
associated with the possible expansion of blue hydrogen 
generation and combustion? What is that--what would that mean?
    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. The study you 
mentioned, the Harvard-Cornell study, demonstrates that, absent 
regulations around the production of blue hydrogen, we could 
end up in a worse place than fossil fuels. And that is a 
chilling finding and absolutely underscored the critical need 
of a very stringent and ambitious production standard around 
all forms of hydrogen, in particular blue hydrogen, considering 
the potential for upstream methane leakage, which, as we all 
know, is a big challenge. We should absolutely do better at 
measuring it and mitigating it. But there remains uncertainties 
around the extent to which we can do that and the timeframe for 
doing that. So a massive or large-scale investment in blue 
hydrogen today would extend the present challenge of methane 
leakage that we don't have a solution for just yet.
    In addition to that, we cannot forget the public health 
impacts associated with gas extraction and use, which render 
blue hydrogen a resource that inherently poses more public 
health risks than a cleaner resource like green hydrogen. And 
considering the overburdened communities we have across the 
country and they're deserving of clean air, we have to be very 
careful with how we approach this resource.
    Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
    And we know green hydrogen has the potential to support 
decarbonization in heavy industry, and we've talked about this 
this morning, long distance, aviation, heavy-duty 
transportation. But it also presents efficiency, 
transportation, and cost challenges. So I'm encouraged by the 
ongoing research, design, and development at DOE to overcome 
these barriers. I was also excited to see research last year 
from Oregon State University in my home State that demonstrated 
that green hydrogen could be produced more efficiently and less 
expensively with different catalysts.
    So, Mr. Wipke, thank you for your work at NREL. What R&D 
challenges must be overcome for green hydrogen to account for 
significantly more than 1 percent of the total U.S. hydrogen 
production?
    Mr. Wipke. Thank you. So really the primary challenge here 
is cost and then scale. And so, you know, the Hydrogen Shot 
goal is focused on that, driving down the cost rapidly, and not 
only through research, which is important, but also through 
deployment. I mean, we've found again and again and again we do 
not know what we don't know. And until you actually try doing 
something at a meaningful scale, you don't know what isn't 
going to work right. And part of it is actually the integration 
with the other parts of the energy system. It's one thing to 
have an electrolyzer you turn on and it runs for years. It's a 
completely different thing to put it into a system where you've 
got wind and solar coming up and down, you've got prices 
spiking up and down, you have weather-related activities going 
on where you might want to back off and provide more power.
    So it's--you know, definitely driving down the cost is the 
first thing, but then that integration is incredibly important, 
and that's why we're focused on a lot of systems integration at 
our Flatirons Campus and ESIF (Energy Systems Integration 
Facility) through the advanced research for energy--integrated 
energy systems areas.
    Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Thank you so much. And I don't have 
another question. I just want to, before I yield back, thank 
you, Dr. Friedmann, for mentioning the work force issues and 
the need for human capital to help solve some of these 
problems. As a Member of the Education and Labor Committee, 
it's something that I'm very much aware of, as well as being a 
Member of this Committee, that we absolutely need to both 
expand and diversify the work force.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll yield back my remaining 
seconds.
    Staff. Ranking Member Lucas is recognized.
    Mr. Lucas. Thank you. Dr. de la Rubia, you describe a 
number of Oklahoma's diverse resources and structural 
advantages that uniquely position the State to be a future 
leader in clean-energy economy. Oklahoma has already proven 
itself to be a major net exporter of energy and a national 
leader in producing natural gas and wind energy. So should it 
come as no surprise when I say we're a State that's used to 
delivering success to the U.S. energy sector.
    So in your opinion, Doctor, how will this kind of 
experience translate into continued success in delivering clean 
hydrogen? When it comes to long-term adoption of hydrogen 
energy technologies, how valuable is the regional cooperation 
at the State level?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Thank you, Representative Lucas. Yes, 
as you mentioned, you know, the State of Oklahoma has assets 
across the entire lifecycle of the hydrogen economy from 
production capabilities to end-use industries. And when put 
together with our original partners in this part of the 
country, you know, clearly, the combination of private-sector 
companies, research universities, and State and local 
communities, tribal nations, as I mentioned in my remarks, 
bring together, you know, the entire set of assets necessary to 
create a thriving hydrogen economy in the United States.
    You know, I think regional partnerships are critical to 
success, you know, because hydrogen ultimately to be 
successful, to be a market-adopted technology, needs to be 
spread throughout the Nation. And so we need to work regionally 
and bring complementary assets to the table. I think it's 
absolutely critical, and we're well-positioned to help to that 
end, to help grow this economy in the United States.
    Mr. Lucas. Continuing with you, Doctor, I'm also glad you 
mentioned the need for hydrogen and fuel cell innovation 
center, as well as a dedicated DOE Office of Science supported 
fundamental research program. Support for DOE basic research 
and research infrastructure is a top priority for the Science 
Committee and this Congress. In order to ensure that we're 
taking full advantage of DOE's research capacities, what steps 
can we take to improve partnerships between research 
universities like OU and the DOE national laboratories?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Thank you for that question. I, you 
know, having spent the bulk of my career at a DOE national 
laboratory, particularly as a Chief Research Officer 
responsible for university partnerships and research at the 
laboratory, I have some fairly strong views on this. I think 
that, you know, when we're talking about the hydrogen economy 
in particular, work force development, as has been mentioned 
several times, is absolutely critical. Workforce development is 
going to happen through our Nation's research universities. A 
partnership between the research universities and the national 
laboratories is absolutely critical, a strong partnership.
    I think there are a lot of success stories between the DOE 
national laboratories and universities, but I think there is 
also a lot more that could be done. As an example, Sandia 
National Laboratory a few years ago established a cooperative 
agreement with a series--strategic series of universities 
across the country in which they invested their own internal 
laboratory-directed research and development funds, which are 
authorized by Congress at every national lab, to partner with 
universities and to fund research-directed universities. That 
mechanism could be exploited a lot more strongly to create 
these kinds of partnerships.
    I will also say that it would be my recommendation that the 
Department of Energy re-competes national laboratory management 
and operating contracts. These are very large contracts across 
all the 17 national laboratories. If those are re-competed, I 
would recommend that we broaden the range of universities that 
are involved in the management and operating contracts, that we 
move away from single-university or two-university contracts to 
multiregional universities that really embrace the entire 
diversity of the Nation, including universities in export 
States and other parts in the center of the country and not 
only on the coasts. I think that would go a long way toward 
enhancing the participation of the U.S. research universities 
in the national laboratory enterprise and allowing the 
laboratories to leverage the work force development efforts 
happening at the universities.
    Mr. Lucas. Thank you very much, Doctor. With that, I yield 
back, Mr. Chairman.
    Staff. Ms. Stevens is recognized.
    Ms. Stevens. Well, thank you so much, and thank you to our 
incredible Chair of this phenomenal Committee and to all of our 
witnesses.
    Clean hydrogen, we've got a company in southeastern 
Michigan in my district. It's located in Novi called Noble Gas 
Systems. They're a startup. You know, they're in this space of, 
you know, kicking off in 2017. They've got some prototypes. 
They're working on, you know, a handful of transportation 
specialties as it relates to hydrogen.
    And we've been talking a lot about these public-private 
partnerships, particularly in the research front, and I know 
that's what we're here to talk about, R&D. But I was just 
wondering, you know, particularly from our panel about ways in 
which the R&D leads to--you know, sometimes we call it 
technology transfer--but support for small businesses 
particularly like Noble Gas Systems in Michigan. Go ahead, Dr. 
Friedmann.
    Dr. Friedmann. Thank you so much. A couple of quick things. 
For starters, as I believe you know, the Department of Energy 
has small business grants, SBIRs (Small Business Innovation 
Research), which actually help new companies get new 
technologies to market. I am confident that there will be SBIR 
money coming out of the Hydrogen EarthShot that is relevant.
    For a company like Noble Gas that makes gas storage 
systems, hydrogen storage is a really important topic. I can 
imagine ways in which a company like that could in fact partner 
into the solicitations around the hubs, for example. They could 
also be sort of a pick-and-shovel company for a lot of projects 
that are going forward around the country that would benefit, 
say, from the Build Back Better provisions around the hydrogen 
production tax credit (PTC). That would create a lot of 
business for a company like Noble Gas.
    Ms. Stevens. Yes, and--well, and, Dr. Friedmann, so I 
don't--the recognition of your title Chief Carbon Wrangler, by 
the way--and it's great to have you back at the Science 
Committee. You know, we're very appreciative of all of your 
input. And in your testimony you were talking about, you know, 
the $8 million for a set of dedicated hydrogen hubs. You know, 
this was in our Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And so 
maybe you can dig at that a little bit more for us, too, 
because we're really proud that not only did we vote and pass 
this legislation, but it got signed into law. It's going to 
have some incredible ramifications for the U.S. economy.
    Dr. Friedmann. It's historic legislation, and it will 
position the country well. It's not sufficient for everything, 
but it's a great opening ante. It has the deployment focus that 
I talked about. Hubs are where the action is. You have to build 
infrastructure, you have to create new supplies, you have to do 
it in communities, so you have to engage the communities in a 
way that is just and fair. And it creates wealth, it creates 
jobs, it creates growth. It is also a place where you can 
anchor innovation of all kinds. It is a way--a place that you 
can anchor human capital development of all kinds.
    I know that the Department of Energy is taking a 
comprehensive view of these things. Secretary Granholm, Acting 
Assistant Secretary Wilcox are doing a terrific job thinking 
through these things. The request for information that just 
came out will advise that process in a way that can help all 
members and all stakeholders in these communities.
    Ms. Stevens. That's great to highlight in this hearing by 
the way, so for all the folks watching back home, an RFI is 
out. We've got Wipke and Kimber who wanted to chime in, too, 
and we want to get you guys in because I'm interested to hear. 
Kimber, did you want to start?
    Mr. Kimber. Yes. Yes. So we've got a partnership with a 
company called Electric Hydrogen, which is very similar to the 
one you're talking about. They're not based in your territory, 
in your State, obviously, but----
    Ms. Stevens. Well, we'd love to have you.
    Mr. Kimber. They're looking for manufacturing. They're 
actually right now----
    Ms. Stevens. Yes, good, come to Michigan.
    Mr. Kimber. We're very focused on job creation. But I think 
that the key there is that, you know, private industry is set 
up to do what needs to happen here, right? I mean, we've talked 
a lot about government R&D, a lot about the DOE. I think that 
there are folks like Breakthrough Capital, which is that Gates-
backed fund. We've now got these sort of billion-dollar call 
it, you know, valley of death or, you know, they fill in what 
used to be called the valley of death kind of venture funds, 
right?
    We need to create deployment pull-through, right? We need 
to do things like potentially the hydrogen tax credit. We need 
to make sure that we can, you know, not vilify the pipeline 
companies and get this stuff blended into pipes safely. If we 
can do those things, you'll see companies like ours, you know, 
going into construction in 2026, 2027 on hundred--multi-hundred 
megawatt, you know, half-a-gigawatt-type electrolyzer 
facilities in the middle of the country in places like 
Oklahoma. When you get that going, that's when you pull through 
demand for the product, right?
    And there's no lack of capital. You've got the R&D tech 
that's already established in companies like what you're 
talking about. You've got the Breakthrough Capital type money 
that's very high-dollar venture. If they had an order from a 
company like mine for $1 billion worth of electrolyzers, we'd 
be off and running, right?
    Ms. Stevens. Yes.
    Mr. Kimber. And so you really have to focus on how do we 
get this stuff deployed at scale, not in toys for 
transportation or other small--you know, small-scale projects.
    Ms. Stevens. Well, I have a bill, Mr. Chairman--and this is 
just as we wrap up--on the investment in venture capital 
resources vis-a-vis the Department of Commerce particularly for 
minority-owned businesses. So as we talk about access to those 
investments, we want to make sure we're building on equity and 
inclusion as well. So thank you, and I yield back. And we'll 
keep this going.
    Staff. Mr. Garcia is recognized.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our 
panelists, very interesting discussions. I want to just touch 
on sort of the production side of the discussion. What are--we 
have the estimates from a cost perspective anywhere from, you 
know, what is it, $5 per kilogram all the way up to the higher 
end. It sounds like the average maybe around $9. But from a 
production perspective, what is the either estimated or 
realized carbon footprint of a kilogram of hydrogen production? 
And I'll defer to, I think, Dr. Wipke first, and we can go 
around the horn if others have different estimates.
    Mr. Wipke. Yes, so Argonne National Laboratory has a model 
called GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy 
Use in Technologies) where they look at the full lifecycle 
emissions of hydrogen production. And I believe from natural 
gas it's maybe 8 or 9 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram 
of hydrogen. The clean hydrogen standard that's been put 
forward is to say that it will be lower than 2 kilograms of 
CO2 per kilogram of hydrogen.
    So I think, you know, it's really important--we can talk 
about colors of the rainbow, but at the end of the day, it's 
objectively measuring the actual carbon emissions not just from 
the source of the hydrogen production but all the way upstream. 
And I agree that, you know, we need to fix and get a handle on 
the methane leakage not only for making hydrogen but for all 
the other things we do with natural gas as well from heating to 
industrial heat, power production. That's not an issue just 
reserved for hydrogen.
    Mr. Garcia. And would anyone else like to discuss that 
estimate or differ with it at all?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. If I may just mention real quickly, 
you know, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 
is in the process of launching a new mission to geostationary 
orbit called GeoCarb that will hopefully be launched in 2024. 
This very, very important mission is focused on measuring 
greenhouse gas emissions across America daily with 5 kilometer 
resolution. When the satellite with this infrared sensor is up 
in orbit above the Earth, you know, it will be able to give us 
very accurate flexes on the surface from the measurements made 
from space on CO2, on oxygen, on methane, on solar-
reflected radiation. And so I just wanted to mention that 
because I believe it's going to be a critical component as we 
go forward of how to guarantee low emissions from these 
processes, and as was just said, not only for hydrogen but for 
all other emissions.
    Dr. Friedmann. If I may add to this----
    Mr. Garcia. Go ahead. Yes, sir.
    Dr. Friedmann. Sorry. If I may add to this discussion, 
there's a huge scholarship on the carbon footprint of hydrogen 
production, so I--what I'm about to say is well-demonstrated. 
As Dr. Wipke said, if you're making it from steam methane 
reforming, it's about 8 or 9 kilograms per kilogram of 
hydrogen. If you do 95 percent capture with an autothermal 
reformer, that would be about 1 kilogram per kilogram, so you 
can get very low. That requires very low upstream emissions. 
The study that Representative Bonamici mentioned assumes 3.5 
percent leakage. That is unreasonable. The United States 
averages 2 percent. Best-in-class is .2 percent. But if you 
want the low-carbon footprint, you really need that low 
emissions. You need 0.2 percent leakage upstream if you want to 
have a low-carbon footprint for fossil. But it can be very low.
    For electricity, the footprint matters, too. If you use 100 
percent renewable electricity, the footprint of hydrogen is 
effectively zero if the full lifecycle, maybe, again, 1 
kilogram per kilogram of CO2. However, if you have 
renewable power firmed by the grid, it will limit 10 kilograms, 
10 times more, worse than steam methane reforming on its own. 
You must have very low carbon inputs of the electricity, 100 
percent renewables or things like hydro and nuclear can do the 
job.
    Again, biomass, if you're using waste biomass, agricultural 
waste, municipal solid waste effectively near zero at the 
beginning. If you add carbon capture to that, you can get minus 
14.
    Mr. Garcia. That's where the subzero net comes in----
    Dr. Friedmann. That's the subzero part, exactly.
    Mr. Garcia. OK.
    Dr. Friedmann. And there's companies in the United States 
in California and Louisiana developing projects that look like 
that.
    Mr. Garcia. OK. Thank you, Mr. Friedmann. And I see Dr. 
Fakhry and Mr. Kimber. Doctor, go ahead.
    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Mr. Garcia. A quick comment. I echo 
much of what Dr. Friedmann just said, but I would urge the 
Committee to not only think about carbon intensity, which is 
absolutely critical since we're trying to decarbonize our 
economy, but also impacts on public health and compatibility 
with long-term goals. Yes, we can achieve low levels with low 
hydrogen of carbon intensity with very strict regulations, but 
it will never be zero. And we need to get to a net-zero 
economy, so we need to look at the most compatible resources 
with this net-zero goal, and green hydrogen offers a better 
value proposition there. Thank you.
    Mr. Garcia. OK. Thank you. And, Mr. Kimber, we'll have to 
come back to you if we have a second round, and I'm out of 
time, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Staff. Mr. McNerney is recognized.
    Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman, I thank the witnesses, 
a very informative hearing this morning.
    One of the things that Mr. Garcia raised was the carbon 
intensity and the target is 2 kilograms of CO2 per 
equivalent kilogram of hydrogen. Mr. Wipke, is 2 kilograms 
equivalent, is that an adequate threshold for carbon 
production, or should we try for better?
    Mr. Wipke. Well, so I think, you know, ultimately at the 
end of the day driving toward zero or negative is what we're 
trying to do, what we want to do. And I go back to what 
happened in California in the 1990's where they came out with 
zero emission vehicle regulations, and zero was the gold 
standard. And then they realized that it was really hard, 
especially at that time with expensive batteries that didn't 
last very long, didn't give you the range, to get people to buy 
the cars. And so they weren't having enough of the market 
impact. So you started looking at hybrid vehicles, partial zero 
emission vehicles, and you--basically, they started putting out 
a portfolio of standards that drove toward that goal. And now 
we do have zero emission vehicles that are market viable that 
people are buying in droves. But to jump there right away and 
say that's the only option, that's the gold standard, we'll do 
nothing else I think really loses a market share potential.
    Mr. McNerney. So the new research has shown that the stream 
methane reforming, which is used to create blue and the gray 
hydrogen, has higher emissions than previously thought. What--
Mr. Wipke, what kind of verification process should we be using 
to ensure that the technology is qualified for the new 
standards?
    Mr. Wipke. So I'm not an expert in that area, and I think 
Julio, Dr. Friedmann covered that quite well. But, you know, I 
think there is government oversight and regulation for other 
industries, and I think this just needs to be tightened up to 
the point, you know, we did this for ozone, we've conquered 
many other technical problems, and I don't see that this is, 
you know, something we can't handle.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Dr. Friedmann, thank you for 
coming to us from Livermore across the hills down the street. 
In your testimony you discussed how more efficient--how more 
efforts should be directed toward innovation on the end use of 
hydrogen across the sectors rather than supply side 
technologies. What are the particular sectors that are good 
candidates for hydrogen utilization that have fallen behind?
    Dr. Friedmann. Heavy industry is the top of my list for 
that. Steel has been mentioned many times and remains a great 
place to do this. We know that we can make steel today from 
zero carbon hydrogen. The Swedes are doing it in a project 
called HYBRIT (Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology). 
It's worth saying that they have supercheap clean electricity, 
which allows them to do this at almost competitive rates. 
Beyond that, though, the chemical industry is the next best 
bet. We could reduce the footprint of the chemical industry by 
50 percent by using clean hydrogen both from feedstocks and 
from heating. Low carbon heat is incredibly important. Right 
now, we burn rocks to melt rocks. If your industrial process 
starts by melting a rock, you're going to use a lot of heat. 
Hydrogen can provide that. So that includes things like cement 
making. We probably can't put hydrogen directly into cement, 
but we can probably put ammonia or other zero-carbon fuels into 
cement to run the kiln. That in itself, 37 percent of global 
emissions come from making stuff. That's the biggest target. 
After that----
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
    Dr. Friedmann [continuing]. Shipping, long-haul trucks, and 
planes.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Mr. Kimber, you indicated that a 
massive scaling up of electrolyzers is needed. I spent my 
career before coming to Congress developing wind turbine 
manufacturing. And I understand that every time you double 
production, you reduce production costs by 10 to 15 percent. 
But the other problem with electrolysis is energy efficiency. 
How do you propose to increase the conversion efficiency?
    Mr. Kimber. Thank you for that. And I'm very aware of your 
background. I'm very glad to have you on the Committee.
    I think you're talking about a learning curve, right? 
You're talking about with a doubling of the deployment of 
something, you know, you cut the cost dramatically. I think 
efficiency is something that has been sort of--a lot has been 
made of it, right? I think when you talk about--people talk a 
lot about kind of wheel-to-well--or well-to-wheel efficiency in 
vehicles, right, where they're saying, you know, hydrogen would 
be far less effective than, say, electric vehicles. So you see 
a lot of these examples. There's no doubt that that's true. I 
guess efficiency matters when a resource is really, really 
expensive, right? So you don't hear a lot of people talking 
about the efficiency of taking a drop of oil from, you know, 
Nigeria and bringing it to your gas station in the form of 
gasoline, right? The amount of petroleum used to do that is 
quite high.
    I think the thing that matters when it comes to efficiency 
is really what the cost of the input electricity is, right? And 
so I would rather have less-efficient electrolyzer put in the 
field today at massive scales. Take a look at the first panels 
that we put in in solar, right? Those were, you know, 200, 175 
kilowatt panels, right? We're talking about 500--550 watt 
panels at this point, right?
    So I guess where I'm going is to say this--the cost of 
solar and wind now is so cheap that the efficiency of these 
first massive deployments can be quite low if necessary. And 
the economics will still work because if you're using twice as 
much of something that costs nothing, you know, you might--
you're better off deploying the low-efficiency electrolyzers, 
pulling that volume down, getting them down the cost curve.
    Mr. McNerney. Well, there's a lot that we could discuss 
there, but I'm out of time, so I yield back.
    Staff. Mr. Gimenez is recognized.
    Mr. Gimenez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. A 
question, I'm intrigued by fuel cells. And maybe Dr. Diaz de la 
Rubia can answer the question. Fuel cells, the fuel cells 
themselves, what is the durability of a fuel cell?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Thank you, sir. I'm going to pass on 
that question. I'm not really an expert on fuel cells, so I 
think I'll let Mr. Wipke answer that from NREL.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK. Somebody can answer that question, the 
durability----
    Mr. Wipke. Yes.
    Mr. Gimenez [continuing]. Of a fuel cell.
    Mr. Wipke. Thank you, Representative Gimenez. So the 
durability of fuel cells today in applications in light-duty 
cars, for example, that are introduced in California, almost 
10,000 cars out there, those are around 5,000-hour durability. 
And of course in a car, you don't use it very much. It sits 
most of the time parked, so that gets you about 100 to 150,000 
miles. What's needed for heavy-duty trucks is four to five 
times that getting up to 1 million miles durability. And so 
inefficiency is also much more important in the heavy-duty 
cycles because you're using it more, and the cost of the fuel 
and the cost of the driver end up being much more important 
than the capital cost upfront. So the Million Mile Fuel Cell 
Truck consortium is really driving toward efficiency and high 
durability so that the fuel cell trucks can get on the market 
and use less fuel and be economic to compete head-to-head with 
diesel when all the environmental concerns are taken into 
account.
    Mr. Gimenez. How does that relate to a battery, let's say, 
in a car? What's the lifespan of a battery in a car?
    Mr. Wipke. So I'm not an expert on batteries, but I believe 
that they're--you know--they're, again, targeting that parity 
with today's gasoline cars, which is, you know, 100,000 miles 
plus. I have a Prius that got 180,000 miles out of my original 
nickel metal hydride battery. I put a used one in there. I'm at 
230,000 miles on it right now still getting almost 50 miles per 
gallon. So there--I think batteries are able to do the job in 
terms of durability in light duty. I think it heavy duty it 
might be a challenge based on, you know, the duty cycle and the 
duration of use.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK. That's very interesting. Look, I'm an all-
of-the-above kind of energy guy, OK? I also believe in that 
never let perfect be the enemy of good. And some people here 
are trying to drive to perfection. I disagree with your 
analysis that somehow electric cars are zero emission. There's 
nothing that's zero emission because they get the electricity 
from something that is producing CO2. Twenty-five 
percent of all greenhouse gases produced in the United States 
actually come from electricity production.
    So I'm also very concerned about our drive toward electric 
vehicles--not the drive toward electric vehicles, but one kind, 
which is battery-operated. And the reason I'm concerned about 
that is because the materials needed to build those batteries--
actually, the raw materials, actually, 80 percent of them are 
controlled by China, all right, and that concerns me a lot.
    I am really intrigued by fuel cells though, and somehow I 
think we need to see if we can be a leader in fuel cell 
technology for light vehicles and for trucks. They have certain 
advantages. No. 1, they can be refueled very quickly just like 
at a gas station. You don't have to wait 20, 30, 50 minutes to 
recharge. And I can imagine when we have a whole bunch of 
electric vehicles, the lines that we're going to have, people 
trying to recharge their vehicles, especially when they're on 
the road, you know, trying to get to--on a long trip are going 
to be--I think they're going to be insurmountable, and that's 
going to be a big problem.
    And then what are we going to do with these batteries when 
they do run out, and where are we going to store them? Because 
apparently, you know, they're not a good thing to store. They 
got toxic material and all that kind of stuff.
    So, you know, I'm--is there a--is there an initiative to 
better fuel cell technology and somehow incentivize fuel cell 
technologies so that we become a leader in, you know, the fuel 
cell technology and the cars and trucks driven by that versus, 
you know, the batteries, which we seem to have picked as the 
winner. And I think that we're going down the wrong path to be 
honest with you. Anybody want to answer that one?
    Staff. You've got 20 seconds.
    Dr. Friedmann. Very briefly, the great State of New York 
there's a company called Plug Power that makes fuel cells. They 
do a great job. Those are used right now in forklifts, heavy-
duty applications, heavy-duty applications are the killer apps 
for fuel cells, long-haul trucking in particular.
    As a research focus, coatings, seals, corrosion, like use-
inspired, deployment-inspired research will really help that.
    Mr. Gimenez. OK. Thank you very much, and I guess my time 
is up. I yield back.
    Staff. Mr. Norcross is recognized.
    Mr. Norcross. Thank you to the Chairman, and I appreciate 
holding the hearing on this. It's fascinating.
    We've primed the pump, the $8 billion that's going in here 
to the R&D I think is a very good move. My question is--and 
I've heard from several of you about private capital, supply 
and demand. And we certainly have had that conversation of how 
we produce hydrogen. What I am curious about more to do with 
the standards that we are setting up. If you ask private 
industry, you know, it's real clear what they do in terms of 
trying to make a profit. We're more looking at this from the 
beginning to the end, and that's a relative spot of carbon 
reduction. What are we going to include in that? We talk about 
the electricity being generated, 100 percent renewable. Well, 
we feed off a grid, so it is a mixed bag no matter what we look 
at. We primed the pump, and then we say that industry--that 
money is going to follow. How do we determine what standards? 
Is it simply the cost, or is it the carbon reduction? If it's 
carbon reduction, where do we start, and where do we stop in 
terms of that calculation? And I want to open that up to all 
the panel.
    Ms. Fakhry. I'd be happy to start, Mr. Norcross, a 
critically important question. The DOE has a big role to play 
here. First, the infrastructure bill, it needs to come up with 
the standards in the next few months. The first step is to 
establish a rigorous boundary for which emissions to take into 
account. And this at a minimum should include emissions arising 
at the site of production and upstream, considering those can 
be very substantial. This boundary should be subject to 
periodic revisions and potentially expanded as emissions from 
hydrogen transport, for instance, become clearer, and we should 
do that.
    The second step is to establish a limit that is low enough 
on those emissions to ensure that we're incentivizing the 
cleanest sources and sources that are the most in line with our 
long-term goals. Hydrogen generation assets are long-lived, 20, 
30, 40 years in some cases. We need to have a long--medium and 
long-term view incenting those standards to orient the market 
in the right direction so as not to be stuck by assets that may 
be stranded in 10 years because they are highly emitting. So 
DOE has a big role to play and a framework for those 
calculations, and the limit will be absolutely critical for you 
in the market.
    Mr. Norcross. So just to followup on this, we have the 
profit motive, which is what makes us a great nation, capital. 
How do we determine and give certainty to those investors that 
you say in 5 years we renew what the standards are? Well, that 
changes a whole calculation for an investment. And at the end 
of the time that we go into it, it's going to determine whether 
the money actually follows this.
    So let me shift to distribution of the hydrogen. And we're 
talking about pipelines. Has that--developments of changing 
from a natural gas to hydrogen is--are we further down the line 
that we can go back and forth? Because right now, pipelines, as 
you mentioned, are a big problem. Well, if we say we're going 
to switch these over to hydrogen, that changes a perspective. 
Is it either/or or both in the use of the pipelines?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Sir, if I may, I'd like to relate an 
experience I had in Germany recently. I traveled to Germany 
with a delegation to visit companies involved in the hydrogen 
economy and learned what was going on with the E.U. and 
Germany. And there we learned from the largest pipeline company 
in Germany, OEG, that their plan is to have 80 percent blends 
to 100 percent by 2050 of hydrogen in all their pipeline 
infrastructure. Their plan is zero natural gas coming out of 
pipelines by 2050. It all will be hydrogen, and it will be on 
the existing pipeline infrastructure. They believe, the German 
engineers believe that it is possible, absolutely--and they are 
demonstrating it--to get 80 percent hydrogen into a natural gas 
pipeline. Now, the compressors, there are pieces of the 
pipeline that needs to be--that need to be changed, but they 
are moving ahead very, very aggressively.
    In the delegation was one of the largest pipeline companies 
in the United States, Williams, the Williams Company in 
Oklahoma. They believe that at this point the only 3 percent 
hydrogen can be blended into the natural gas pipelines. And so 
there's a big disconnect between what is happening in Germany 
right now or in the E.U. and what we believe to be possible 
here in the United States. I think there's a lot--there are a 
lot of open questions when it comes to the performance of the 
current pipeline infrastructure for hydrogen, very, very 
important topic.
    Mr. Norcross. Thank you. I'm out of time, and I yield back.
    Staff. Mr. Obernolte is recognized.
    Mr. Obernolte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to 
the witnesses. This has been a really fascinating hearing.
    Mr. Wipke, I wanted to ask you a question about some of the 
costing figures that you were citing when we were talking about 
the DOE's Hydrogen Shot program. You know, it's been kind of a 
focus of this hearing, the distinction between development and 
deployment. And, you know, we can look at the experience that 
we've had deploying electric vehicle technology as kind of, you 
know, the canary in the coal mine of how difficult it's going 
to be to get hydrogen technology deployed. You know, it's one 
thing to develop it, but deploying it requires us to meet a lot 
of commercial conditions that, you know, aren't present in the 
laboratory.
    So, you know, particularly for industries where hydrogen is 
really our best method of decarbonization like aviation, 
maritime shipping, long-haul trucking, you mentioned that the 
Hydrogen Shot program is geared toward getting the cost of 
hydrogen down below $1 per kilogram. What would the cost per 
kilogram have to be to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in 
those industries? Because those industries are obviously very 
cost-sensitive, and we're not going to succeed in deployment 
until we achieve some kind of cost parity. So has that research 
been done?
    Mr. Wipke. Yes. So today's hydrogen from natural gas is 
around $1.50 to $2 per kilogram of hydrogen, you know, with no 
carbon capture or storage. So that was kind of--for a while, 
that was our bogey for research was to hit $2 per kilogram of 
hydrogen. And what we've done with the Hydrogen Shot initiative 
is we actually lowered that to be lower than natural gas. It is 
absolutely challenging and a worthy endeavor to drive toward 
that. And even if we get to just parity with natural-gas-based 
hydrogen with no, you know, capture of the CO2, I 
think we will be competitive in a lot of industries. And in 
fact heavy-duty trucking, because of the way they operate and 
the high energy throughput and the need to get toward not only 
low carbon but also local air quality requirements, I think 
hydrogen will be superior.
    So we're going to drive toward $1, and if we along the way, 
you know, pass through different sectors where it becomes 
competitive, those markets will grab it, especially the price-
sensitive ones in industry where they make decisions based on 
economics.
    Mr. Obernolte. OK. Yes. So I'm asking you a slightly 
different question though. I mean, if you take something like 
maritime shipping as an example, you know, they use those high 
sulfur heavy fuels for a reason, because it's the cheapest way 
of getting, you know, a massive ship from point A to point B. 
At what price point would hydrogen have to be to be cost-
competitive with fuels like that?
    Mr. Wipke. I mean, whatever the cost is of bunker fuel for 
a ship. You know, if they need to be cost-competitive with 
that, that would be extremely low. You know, I think one of the 
big opportunities is countries like Australia and others who 
have a lot of land and renewables to actually make hydrogen as 
an export. And that really enables, you know, new applications 
like green and exporting hydrogen across the ocean. But I don't 
think it will necessarily be done just based on economics at 
that scale. They will be exporting it to countries that really 
care about carbon and are willing to pay more of a price 
premium. So I don't think you can just say we need to get to 
price parity in every market, you know, today or we don't even 
start.
    Mr. Obernolte. No, no, I understand. But--and I don't think 
anyone would argue we have to get to price parity. But if you 
look at what we've gone through with renewable electricity 
generation, you know, you can see this, you know, tug of--
this--you know, that these ideas are in tension, wanting to 
deploy low-carbon technology and wanting to protect consumers 
from pricing increases, right?
    So I'm just wondering--maybe Dr. de la Rubia, maybe you 
have the answer to this question. So has anyone done the math 
about if we get down to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen, you know, 
how close that is to being--to having price parity with fossil 
fuels?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Look, I mean, my--in my view it's--
and it has been said before that, you know, different markets 
are going to adopt hydrogen at different rates. I want to--I 
don't have a concrete answer to your question, but I want to 
use an example, again, from my trip to Germany back in 
November. We were talking about green steel a lot, and it has 
been brought up here. And the real question from the market 
sector companies was who is going to adopt green steel? Because 
it's going to cost a lot more than, you know, it does to make 
steel today. And the answer with green hydrogen coming from 
Sweden was Mercedes-Benz. And Mercedes-Benz is interested in 
adopting green steel because they have demand from customers 
for S-class vehicles where, you know, if you're paying 120,000 
or $140,000, it probably doesn't matter that much.
    Mr. Obernolte. OK.
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. And so there is a demand sector, 
right, but it's very small. So introducing--even if the 
efficiencies are not 100 percent or the costs are not parity 
yet, introducing this technologies now for a specific possibly 
high-end market, OK, like an S500 Mercedes-Benz is where the 
industry is going, is where the market is going to start 
adopting hydrogen. So----
    Mr. Obernolte. All right. Yes, we're out of time here, but 
I think it's a fascinating topic. But my point is we ought to 
know the answer, right? Because industries like maritime 
shipping and aviation where hydrogen is the most promising new 
technology for decarbonization, you know, are very price-
sensitive. And, you know, we're never going to get widescale 
adoption until we get somewhere close to price parity. And so 
we know--I was just trying to compare the two. You know what, 
but thanks very much, and thanks for the fascinating hearing. I 
really enjoyed it. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Staff. Mr. Casten is recognized.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you. I really appreciate this hearing. 
One of the things that I love about this Committee is that you 
all have the pleasure of testifying before the only Committee 
in Congress that deals with nonnegotiable laws, you know, mass 
conservation, energy conservation. It's a perk of this 
Committee.
    I want to--I mention that because I want to start--and I 
really appreciate Mr. Friedmann's comments about how important 
some of the industrial uses of hydrogen are. And at the same 
time I will tell you that I'm really concerned that we have--we 
don't prioritize our research budgets always in the ways that 
have the most use.
    And so, Mr. Wipke, I want to go through just a couple just 
straight math issues I'm hoping we can answer quick because I 
want to get to sort of a meaty policy question at the end for 
everybody's input. Twenty years ago, the state-of-the-art in 
energy storage for electricity was lead acid batteries, and the 
state-of-the-art for hydrogen was compressed hydrogen tanks. 
Lead acid batteries were, you know--and I'm going back--some of 
these numbers are old--you know, 40 watt hours per kilogram, 
maybe 80 watt hours per liter. State-of-the-art for batteries 
is now lithium-ion. It's almost a 10fold improvement, you know, 
touching up close to 300 watt hours per liter, you know, close 
to 700--or, I'm sorry, 700 watt hours per liter and close to 
300 watt hours per kilogram. So that's a 10fold improvement, 
which is why we can now talk about vehicles with long ranges.
    And so as an energy carrier, whether we're going to use 
electricity or hydrogen as an energy carrier, we've seen these 
huge advances in the mass and energy density. Over the last 20 
years, has there been any meaningful advance in the energy or 
mass density of hydrogen storage technology such as we've seen 
for electricity? And I'm not criticizing the research. I'm just 
trying to understand, has there been any change in those 
numbers?
    Mr. Wipke. Yes, so for decades the goal of the hydrogen 
storage research was onboard storage for vehicles, for cars 
specifically, so very tight requirements. Essentially what was 
needed for a car has been met. You can store 6 kilograms on 
board in compressed hydrogen tanks. It does the job. It also 
does the job for heavy-duty trucks today. However, the research 
hasn't stopped, and I think, you know----
    Mr. Casten. I'm sorry to cut you off because I do want to 
get to my question.
    Mr. Wipke. Yes.
    Mr. Casten. I'm just asking like state-of-the-art was 
compressed in hydrogen, you know, maybe liquefied 20 years ago. 
Do we have new technologies that have a greater--I'm not 
questioning the goals. I'm saying has the technology changed 
much in the 20 years as far as our ability to get more watt 
hours into less mass, less volume?
    Mr. Wipke. I think the goal posts aren't necessarily there 
for onboard storage. We don't need to do it to do it with the 
cars, right?
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. Wipke. We've gotten where we need to.
    Mr. Casten. Well, let me--and, again, I'm not just talking 
about vehicles. I'm saying hydrogen as an energy carrier is 
tied to that storage question. From an efficiency perspective, 
I take issue with Mr. Kimber's comment that efficiency doesn't 
matter. It does matter. If we can, you know, generate solar 
power with half as much acreage, that's a big deal even though 
the sun is free.
    Twenty years ago, you know, the state-of-the-art for 
conversion, you know, round-trip efficiency on a battery 70, 80 
percent, round-trip efficiency electrolyzer to storage to a 
fuel cell, you know, maybe 30 percent, more if we're going to 
use liquefaction. I don't think either of those numbers have 
meaningfully changed in 20 years, so we're still at 70 to 80 
percent round-trip efficiency on electric, 30 percent--Mr. 
Wipke, do I have--has there been anything that's really changed 
in your view of sort of those round-trip efficiency numbers?
    Mr. Wipke. Yes, so I think some things have changed 
actually relates to storage, so stationary storage of hydrogen 
if you're using compressed tanks, you've got to compress it. 
There's actually metal hydride storage, and we're going to be 
demonstrating that at NREL at a scale of 525 kilograms of 
hydrogen where you store it at a much lower pressure. You can 
actually remove the compressor from that efficiency chain. So--
--
    Mr. Casten. OK. And I'm sorry to keep cutting you off, but 
even if you--even if the storage was free, you're still looking 
at a, you know, 70, 80 percent electrolyzer efficiency and a 40 
percent fuel cell efficiency, so it's--your--from a cycle 
perspective, that green hydrogen has an efficiency--now--and I 
want to get to one last point and then get to my policy 
question for all of you. This one I think is much less 
controversial.
    Mr. Wipke, is there more carbon per mass in a cubic meter 
of CO2 or a cubic meter of crude oil?
    Mr. Wipke. I don't know the answer to that. I'm sorry.
    Mr. Casten. Anybody want to chime in? It's a simple 
question. There's a lot more carbon in a cubic meter of crude 
oil than CO2.
    Dr. Friedmann. Yes, there is.
    Mr. Casten. I say that because we cannot do EOR (enhanced 
oil recovery). If we're pumping CO2 under the ground 
to release oil, we're increasing CO2 emissions, so 
we've got to do green hydrogen. So all of my questions are not 
to criticize green hydrogen. But my question on all of this is 
that if, as an energy carrier, we're not making big advances in 
efficiency, we're not making big--but electricity has really 
surged ahead, then are we doing enough to focus on the 
industrial uses of hydrogen that Mr. Friedmann mentioned, and 
do we have any sort of theoretically plausible way, gamechanger 
for hydrogen storage as we've seen for electricity? Because if 
we don't, then I think we really need to rethink how our 
research budgets are prioritized.
    And I realize I'm out of time, but if--but that was the 
question I wanted to get to, and you all are the experts. I'd 
love to know, are we doing enough, and are we prioritizing in 
the right areas? Because it feels to me like the energy carrier 
focus has gotten all the attention, but the real opportunities 
are in the less sexy fields like making steel and making 
cement, thermal use, as Dr. Friedmann was talking about.
    And I realize I'm out of time unless the Chairman will 
afford someone the time to respond.
    Chairman Bowman. Yes, 15 seconds each if y'all can.
    Mr. Wipke. Yes.
    Dr. Friedmann. All right. Go ahead----
    Ms. Fakhry. I just want to strongly agree with you, Mr. 
Casten.
    Mr. Kimber. Yes, Congressman, I think, you know, my 
efficiency argument was more around, you know, the fact the 
solar efficiency is up over 30 percent since we started 
deploying it, you know, in my business, 10, 15 years ago. It 
takes deployment to reach those increases in efficiency. You 
can't do it in a lab. You're not just going to find 5 years 
from now that we have a 30 percent increase in efficiency in 
the lab. You've got to put a lot of stuff in the field.
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. So, Congressman, I would say that 
your storage question is tied to the distributed generation of 
hydrogen as well. If we're able to distribute the generation 
and store it locally, OK, there are companies right now in the 
private sector who are filing patents with new technologies for 
storing hydrogen underground in cylinders, very efficient, 
effective methods for storage, demonstrating new materials and 
coatings to do that safely. And if you coupled your storage 
question not for transportation but for other industrial uses--
with local generation, right, then I think we can really make a 
lot of progress.
    Dr. Friedmann. Last but not least? You should definitely 
focus on the unsexy stuff. That's where the money is, that's 
where the work is, 100 percent. That includes infrastructure 
refurbishing, that includes storage, that includes industrial 
use, that includes tugboats and ammonia, like fertilizer 
production. All that stuff is a great place to put some 
research money.
    Mr. Casten. Well, thank you all, and I--that sounds like 
the line I used it to convince my wife to marry me. I yield 
back.
    Staff. Ms. Ross is recognized.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much. And this has been so 
interesting.
    I want to--I'm really--I want to followup a little bit on 
some of the things that Congressman Casten and Congressman 
Norcross have brought up. So I just want to be clear. You're 
not talking about hydrogen replacing a natural gas peaker 
plant, for example. You're talking about hydrogen being used in 
much more localized areas, not necessarily as part of a 
utilities fleet. Can somebody elaborate on that or is the goal 
to have hydrogen replace a peaker plant?
    Mr. Kimber. As the person who builds power plants here, 
Congresswoman, I'd like to speak to that. I've spent my entire 
career in the power sector, including the gas-fired sector. 
Power to gas to power is the last place we should put hydrogen 
just to be clear. It could potentially be used to fill in a 
little bit when we get to sort of like that last 
decarbonization of the grid. It could be used for firming and 
some of that stuff. I don't think we should be deploying a 
bunch of new hydrogen-focused turbines. There are a lot of 
turbines out there already that could run increasingly higher 
degrees of hydrogen that are, you know, practically useless for 
economic purposes right now going forward, so we should run 
those into the ground. So, you know, I think that is really the 
key.
    I think what I would say is I totally agree with 
Congressman Casten that we should focus on those unsexy places, 
ammonia production and refining. These are--you know, right 
there, that's a massive decarbonization lever, as well as 
steel, although that's a little bit harder to do for a number 
of reasons.
    I do think though--and I want just really highlight this. 
I've been trying to say this all along, that pipelines matter. 
And I'll tell you why. I'm not suggesting that we're going to 
get it to the end user. I don't want to burn hydrogen in my 
stove. I do want to put it in pipelines up to, call it, 10, 20 
percent because in the near term I can park a massive wind and 
solar facility next to a pipeline in Oklahoma, and I can 
produce a huge amount of hydrogen, right? If--it allows us to 
scale it at first. When it reaches a certain concentration in 
those pipes, people will begin to build ammonia facilities next 
to my plant in Oklahoma. People will begin to build hydrogen-
only pipelines. But just like the power grid, you've got to put 
on the grid first and then people will realize that there's a 
market for it.
    Ms. Ross. OK. So--and I see other people want to answer, 
but I want to get this next question in, and then if people 
want to respond to both. So then my next question is, you know, 
really getting the approval to be in that pipeline. And I 
represented renewable natural gas companies, and they kept 
getting booted out of the pipeline because of PHMSA (Pipeline 
and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) and because of 
all of these other things. And so, you know, I assume you don't 
have the money to pay for that infrastructure yourselves and 
you're going to have to work with the natural gas companies. 
And so, you know, how's that going to--how is that going to 
work, and how can we help? Because there's lots of people who 
want to use built infrastructure, and sharing it and providing 
safety is a tricky business.
    Mr. Kimber. And I don't want to dominate this, but I--if 
anybody else was to go, but I--we're in a lot of conversations 
with FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) and PHMSA 
right now. We--we're out looking for--we have--we are 
entertaining investments in our company from pipeline 
companies. The pipeline companies want to be involved. They 
want to do this. They want to carry hydrogen. It's not like 
landfill gas where there's a lot of other quality issues with 
impurities and other things like that. The blending of hydrogen 
is a little bit, from a technical perspective, cleaner to them. 
They also see it as a much more scalable industry that they can 
see a real long-term business in as opposed to landfill gas, 
which is quite small.
    Ms. Ross. OK. Mr. Chairman, if it's OK if the other folks 
can respond? Thank you.
    Dr. Friedmann. Just very briefly if I may, if your--first 
of all, if you're going to replace a natural gas peaker, if 
you're going to use hydrogen in that service, you should be 
using a fuel cell so you don't burn anything. Start with that. 
That is better all around.
    I have recommended to this Committee and other Committees 
in the past, testimony, we need a census of national pipelines, 
especially in the distribution networks but also transportation 
networks. We don't know the metallurgy, we don't know the 
pressure ratings, we don't know the throughput, we don't know 
the materials, we don't know the vintage. And in the case of 
distribution, we don't know the location. It would be great to 
have a census of pipelines so we could answer these questions 
definitively.
    Ms. Ross. Right. And, Mr. Chairman--I mean, Ms. Fakhry--
yes.
    Ms. Fakhry. Great, thank you, Ms. Ross. Quickly, I would 
like to add one more note of caution around this conversation 
of retrofitting existing pipelines. I know Mr. Kimber's company 
is doing some great stuff, but there is a risk here that we 
start putting in a lot of money in existing infrastructure, 
retrofitting it, extending its lifeline, and not using it or 
not using it fully. So I do want to make sure that we have a 
long-term vision for why we would be retrofitting or putting 
money into a system that we need to start thinking about 
pruning. So that is a note of caution I hope we always have 
hover over retrofit conversations.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I 
yield back.
    Staff. Mr. Lamb is recognized.
    Mr. Lamb. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you all 
appearing today.
    I was wondering if our power plant expert in the last--you 
were talking about being able to generate hydrogen out of solar 
and wind farm and get some of it onto the system. Could we kind 
of pick up there where you left off? Because I think the point 
that our last witness just made about sort of retrofitting and 
looking at the entire system as a whole is a good note of 
caution. But I am familiar with research that shows we could 
selectively retrofit or improve existing parts of our pipeline 
infrastructure to begin allowing the blending of hydrogen into 
the natural gas system. And I was just wondering if that's 
where you were going with that.
    Mr. Kimber. That's exactly where I'm going with it. There 
are many of these pipeline systems right now. I will tell you 
the reason we first started talking to them is because most of 
them are trying to electrify their compression to begin with, 
so most of them are actually moving to upgrade their compressor 
systems, and that includes a lot of their--you know, a lot of 
their--you know, balance of pipe if you will as well. So 
they're already putting money into these systems.
    In addition to that, a lot of these systems could be 
isolated, so I'm not for a second suggesting you put it into a 
bunch of pipes that have a lot of, you know, local distribution 
downstream to people's stoves. But there are a lot of pipes 
that have, you know, potentially only an industrial use 
downstream or----
    Mr. Lamb. Right.
    Mr. Kimber [continuing]. Things of that nature. So--and I 
want to be clear with people that even fractional percentages 
in some of these pipes is gigawatts of electrolyzer capacity. 
If we put that amount of capacity in the ground in the next 5 
years, we are going to be sitting here with electrolyzers at 
half the price of what they are today. Our cost forecast with 
folks like Electric Hydrogen, which is run by the last two CTOs 
(Chief Technical Officers) of First Solar, one of the most 
successful solar companies, and ourselves, we own some of the 
largest solar facilities in the country, show us getting well 
below $5. So I think that, you know, what--there are price 
points people are talking about right now that I think industry 
has maybe even a more aggressive view on where those can go.
    Mr. Lamb. So it--am I right then to interpret this to say 
that the economics already work if we had--if we used some of 
the hydrogen programs in place basically to take care of the 
pipeline piece of it in a selective way? Is that what you're 
saying?
    Mr. Kimber. They work in certain applications, and so 
that's----
    Mr. Lamb. Yes.
    Mr. Kimber [continuing]. Where I'm going. They work--well, 
first of all, the hydrogen PTC would accelerate things 
tremendously, so, you know, we absolutely, you know, need to 
have that. I think in lieu of that we could find premium 
buyers--if we could combine premium buyers with the lowest cost 
to generate, so you go to Oklahoma, you put it in a pipeline or 
you put it over the fence into one of the largest ammonia 
plants in the country, these are the places where we can get to 
multi-hundred megawatt scale in a single application and drive 
down that cost. You then find the buyer for that ammonia or 
the--you know, the green hydrogen that's going in the pipe that 
is--has the highest willingness to pay.
    Mr. Lamb. Right.
    Mr. Kimber. And we can talk a little bit more about that, 
too, because we really need to borrow from what the DOE has 
done in renewable energy credits, the environmental attributes 
in electricity. We need DOE to create a similar renewable 
energy credit for hydrogen so that it is a tradable attribute, 
right? That has to happen because if it's not, when you put it 
in the pipe or you give it to the ammonia guy, they have to 
want the green hydrogen. We don't need that. If I could just--
--
    Mr. Lamb. Right.
    Mr. Kimber [continuing]. Sell hydrogen to an ammonia plant 
that doesn't care if it's green and then sell the greenness of 
that to another ammonia plant down on the Gulf Coast or who has 
a customer that's willing to pay for green ammonia, that's what 
I need. That's what made electric--green electricity so 
successful in this country.
    Mr. Lamb. Got it. And, Dr. Friedmann, I wanted to ask 
because I know you were connected to Columbia's Center on 
Energy Policy. That was where the information I'm aware of 
about the viability of beginning to retrofit and fix a lot of 
our existing gas pipeline networks to make it ready for 
increasing levels of hydrogen that would occur over time. Are 
you familiar with that, and do you see that as kind of a viable 
national project for us to try to, you know, preserve and 
improve parts of this pipeline network?
    Dr. Friedmann. The short answer is yes. The long answer is 
there's a lot of hair on that. The--some pipelines can only 
take 5 percent hydrogen blending. Some can take 20 percent 
hydrogen blending.
    Mr. Lamb. And that's why you're saying we need a census 
basically to know what is what?
    Dr. Friedmann. Right. It is also the case that leakage is a 
real risk. You add hydrogen to a pipeline, it has a leakage 
risk, and that cannot only be a safety risk also a climate 
risk. We need to get our hands around that, and in fact work 
that we're doing at Columbia with EDF (Environmental Defense 
Fund) is trying to get a better handle on what that--those 
numbers actually look like.
    Mr. Lamb. Great. Well, I'm out of time. Mr. Chairman, thank 
you very much. And to all the witnesses, thanks again for 
appearing. Goodbye.
    Staff. Mr. Tonko is recognized.
    Mr. Tonko. Oh, thank you. And thank you, Chairman Bowman, 
for holding this important hearing, and thank you to the 
witnesses for being here today, very informative.
    Clean hydrogen can play an important role in our Nation's 
clean-energy future. In particular, hydrogen may prove 
essential to decarbonizing difficult-to-abate sectors such as 
heavy-duty transportation and chemical and metals production. 
To address the important role hydrogen will play in a clean-
energy economy, Congress has invested billions of dollars for 
R&D and deployment through the Infrastructure Investment and 
Jobs Act, and the Biden Administration is taking great steps to 
advance U.S. leadership on clean hydrogen.
    But it's not just the Federal Government. My home State of 
New York has also made a commitment to become a major hub for 
green hydrogen. Our State has the infrastructure and the 
expertise to make this a reality. The capital region's own Plug 
Power, which was earlier mentioned, is a global leader in the 
emerging green hydrogen market, and NYSERDA (New York State 
Energy Research and Development Authority) continues to invest 
in processes that will enable a safe, equitable, green hydrogen 
economy. So I'm excited to see the enthusiasm for clean 
hydrogen growing, but our work isn't done. Just from the broad 
range of topics covered in this hearing, you can see the 
exciting research going on. We must continue to invest in clean 
hydrogen R&D to continue reducing cost and making it a widely 
available option for numerous sectors and uses. So, as we make 
this energy transition, we need to learn from our past mistakes 
and make certain that the clean-energy economy is good for 
everyone, especially our most vulnerable neighbors.
    So, Ms. Fakhry, what should we be thinking about in the R&D 
space to ensure that clean hydrogen production brings benefits 
to surrounding communities and does not increase pollution?
    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Mr. Tonko, critically important 
question. I would start by saying NRDC does not speak for 
impacted communities, and their perspectives and voices should 
be heard.
    I cannot fully answer this question without the 
perspectives of those impacted communities, and I would thereby 
strongly recommend that DOE engage in direct outreach to those 
communities in developing its own hydrogen work further to 
ensure their perspectives and concerns are reflected.
    However, for now, to respond to your question, two 
critically important guiding principles have to hover over this 
conversation. One is we have to strongly prioritize those 
projects that have no public health implications. That is 
critical, and DOE has to make sure those are prioritized. The 
second piece is that projects have to lower local air 
pollution, not just keep it as such, has to demonstrate a 
lowering of local air pollution and be subject to early and 
proactive engagement with those communities.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And the Infrastructure Investment and 
Jobs Act created a clean hydrogen manufacturing and recycling 
program, among other investments in R&D at DOE. So, Mr. Kimber, 
how can R&D for clean hydrogen production and recycling help 
support domestic supply chain capabilities?
    Mr. Kimber. I'm not entirely sure that I'm qualified, but 
I'll take a quick stab. I think, you know, the renewable 
industry in general, whether it be batteries or solar or, you 
know, electrolyzers are no different. We build things with 
equipment that oftentimes has rare metals and other inputs, so 
I think that, you know, R&D and recycling is critically 
important. I actually think doing it now is very farsighted. It 
gets ahead of the problem where I think, you know, in solar, 
for instance, we got caught a little bit flat-footed and are, 
you know, playing catch-up on what it takes to recycle a lot of 
the panels, wind turbine blades, things like that. You know, so 
I think that that can be a critical part of not only our 
environmental responsibility as an industry but also 
potentially reusing those elements so that we're less reliant, 
as one of the Members said, on China and other, you know, chief 
geopolitical rivals for those goods.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And, Mr. Wipke, what additional 
innovations can help in reducing the cost of electrolysis and 
clean hydrogen produced using this technology?
    Mr. Wipke. Thank you. So, yes, we're working on a lot of 
new materials to support that through the various consortia I 
mentioned earlier. I think it's also important to look at this 
scale, and manufacturing and Plug Power has been a great 
example of putting money into actually getting to large-scale 
production of things. And that is absolutely critical. I think 
things like large-scale deployments and demonstrations help 
that. But ultimately at the end of the day the private sector 
investment is 6 to 10 times more than government investment, 
and that is what really drives things quickly. That's what 
drove it in solar and wind and batteries. And I think we are 
very close to being to the point where the investors and the 
private sector are just going to take this and run, and the 
government role will be on the research and keeping that 
pipeline feeding toward them with better innovations.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you so much. With that, Mr. Chair, I yield 
back. Thank you.
    Staff. Dr. Foster is recognized.
    Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Many of the advanced zero-carbon power technologies end up 
producing energy that shows up ultimately as process heat 
usually in the range of 600 to 900 degrees C, and that's true 
whether you're a believer in fusion energy or solar thermal or 
advanced nuclear or even fast reactors or accelerator-driven 
systems that exploit the huge amount of energy remaining in the 
spent nuclear fuel that's piling up around the country.
    In all cases, these ultimately produce high-temperature 
process heat. And so your options for using this process heat 
are either to, first, convert it to electricity with 
turbomachinery and generators and so one and then use that 
electricity and electrolyzers to get hydrogen where maybe 
you'll be lucky to get to a combined efficiency of maybe 30 
percent, or with direct thermochemical processes where you 
might get to 50 percent efficiency and potentially much lower 
capital costs.
    So now we're about to spend several billion dollars on 
hydrogen hubs, one of which is specified to use nuclear energy. 
So my question is what are the merits of having this nuclear 
hydrogen hub be based on standard technologies, say, putting 
electrolyzers in an existing nuclear plant or on direct 
thermochemical production of hydrogen or ammonia or methanol or 
other hydrogen carriers? And if you could answer this both from 
the point of view of the likelihood of hitting the $1 per 
kilogram goal and of learning something new and useful. So I 
guess, Dr. Friedmann, since you mentioned the sulfur iodide 
cycle, I'll start with you.
    Dr. Friedmann. Sure. And I look forward to Dr. Diaz de la 
Rubia's comments. He's also a really deep nuclear expert. The 
sulfur iodine cycle is still promising. It's still largely 
unbaked. There just hasn't been enough work yet to really show 
that it can be done. It really does require high temperatures, 
more like 850 or 900 degrees Celsius to work. That's a very 
high temperature novel reactor. We don't have a lot of those 
out there. So it remains promising, remains largely unexplored.
    That makes it a great focus for something like a pilot or a 
demonstration. It makes it a poor choice for hub. The hubs 
really require industrial production to deliver to customers of 
all kinds. There's just a little too much technical risk in the 
sulfur iodine cycle.
    I would say that we have not thought at all--from a 
research perspective, we have really not thought at all about 
how to use waste heat to help electrolyzers. That's a really 
good thing to do actually. Many electrolyzers must run at high 
temperatures, so you can use some of that waste heat in a 
productive way. That sort of heat integration efficiency gain 
work largely undone. Idaho and NREL have done a little bit of 
good work on this actually that I would like to see more of 
that.
    Mr. Foster. Yes. It's my understanding that the Japanese do 
have a pilot plant on sulfur iodide. Yes, Dr. de la Rubia?
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. Well, thank you, Congressman. I don't 
have much to add to what Julio just said. I would also--I would 
only point out that, I mean, one would hope that we're able to 
accelerate the regulatory process to advance small modular 
nuclear reactors that operate at high temperatures, as you 
mentioned. I think we're going to need that industry to grow 
here in the United States, not only overseas, which is where, 
unfortunately, we're seeing most of the action right now even 
from American companies licensing overseas and planning to 
commercialize overseas. I would like to see that industry be 
brought back or ensured that it stays here in the United 
States, that all these innovations that we created, you know, 
through the decades stays here because I think it would be very 
important to the hydrogen economy as well.
    Mr. Foster. Yes. Well, I thought it was interesting that 
one of the advanced reactor design that we are now prototyping 
has molten salt heat storage and tanks, which could really 
affect the economics. And, you know, it strikes me there's a 
possibility to do some R&D simply by using that as a source of 
process heat. And then when there's surplus generating 
capacity, be able to divert some of the power to, for example, 
making hydrogen or related compounds.
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. No doubt about it, sir. That--I will 
also say, as you mentioned, believers in fusion, I am a very, 
very strong believer in fusion energy. The recent advances that 
we have seen coming out of Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory, coming out of the JET (Joint European Torus) 
tokamak in the United Kingdom really point a way toward, you 
know, the fact that we're finally getting to the place where 
the science is coming through. And I think we also need to 
think about how fusion energy may play a role in our future 
energy economy. I think it's the time now.
    Mr. Foster. What are the temperatures of process heat that 
fusion plants are talking about as producing? They're molten--
--
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. So--yes, in the case of inertial 
fusion energy plants using molten salts, the process heat will 
be about 8-900 degrees Celsius.
    Mr. Foster. OK.
    Dr. Diaz de la Rubia. So, again, very high temperatures. I 
believe that's the case with tokamaks as well.
    Mr. Foster. Yes. I'm just struck at how similar these look 
at--look like from the balance of plants points of view and 
that there's a lot of shared R&D. All right. My time is up. I 
yield back.
    Staff. Mr. Beyer is recognized.
    Mr. Beyer. Thank you, and thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks so 
much for having this hearing today. It's really fun to hear 
that more and more of our top scientists are recognizing that 
fusion has a real role to play, and not just long after we're 
dead and buried, that it can happen while we're still here.
    And--but I--we do need to have every tool in our toolbox to 
rapidly decarbonize, and green hydrogen plays that role in the 
hard-to-decarbonize sectors. I worked with Congressman Larsen 
and Congresswoman DelBene to introduce the Clean Hydrogen 
Production and Investment Tax Credit Act. It was included in 
Build Back Better, and we hope it will be in the final version 
of Build Back Better that Senator Manchin approves.
    Ms. Fakhry, the bipartisan infrastructure law has one hub 
designated for blue hydrogen, and you appropriately note the 
concerns we might have with hydrogen sourcing, use, and 
deployment for negative climate impacts if not done properly. 
How do we best shape the blue hydrogen hub to account for those 
concerns?
    Ms. Fakhry. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. I'd also be curious to 
hear my fellow witnesses' ideas here. Yes, there will be a hub 
that will be a blue hydrogen hub, and this is where DOE has an 
absolute obligation to input and implement a very rigorous and 
ambitious production standard around the blue hydrogen, and we 
need a very strong measurement, reporting, and verification 
system for methane. We still don't have that. This is the 
optimal opportunity to start implementing more rigorous rules 
around methane leakage.
    And when it comes to carbon capture, there needs to be a 
requirement that only high carbon capture rates would be 
allowed. We cannot allow a 50 percent capture. That is not 
enough. We need to be pushing for 90 percent and more with 
stringent requirements to ensure that this is always the 
operational pattern. It's not a fluctuating between 90 and 50. 
We need to ensure high levels of capture.
    And, in addition to that, there needs to be a consideration 
of public health metrics considering the potential public 
health that blue hydrogen poses to communities. There needs to 
be very strong and early engagement with those communities 
around those projects and strict public health metrics that the 
DOE has to impose on these projects.
    Dr. Friedmann. If I could add briefly to that, we should 
have low upstream emissions standards associated with that. Dr. 
Fakhry had mentioned that briefly, but it can't be said enough. 
We really want to make sure that's low. To Senator Casten--I 
mean, to Representative Casten's point, it would be great if 
blue hydrogen projects were not automatically associated with 
enhanced oil recovery. In Build Back Better there are 
amendments to 45Q that would provide $85-a-ton incentive for 
storage in saline aquifers. If the lifecycle of the footprint 
of the hydrogen is considered in its totality upstream and 
downstream, you'd want to do saline aquifer storage. There are 
great places to do this all over the United States from 
Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico to California. It would be 
wonderful to see projects adopt that stance.
    Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Mr. Kimber, what does it take in your 
mind to make electrolysis-based hydrogen cost-competitive with 
solar in terms of cost? Germany would argue that we got cost-
competitive solar because of their big investments. So what do 
we need for green hydrogen?
    Mr. Kimber. We need big investments by government, right? I 
think that what we've seen right now is we are just on the very 
cusp of, you know, the huge benefits from the investment we've 
seen in renewables in wind and solar, right? We're seeing 
massive job creation. There are hundreds of thousands of people 
in this country working in clean energy. You know, and I think 
that the--you know, the hydrogen PTC, to your point, that has 
been included in Build Back Better, but I think it has broad 
support, in fact bipartisan support in many cases I think is 
something that has to happen. We have to have pull-through of 
this demand, right? We have to build this stuff for a good 5 or 
10 years for us to really begin to see the scalability, the 
repeatability, and for it to become a standalone industry that 
can run on its own. So I think we need, you know, all of the 
stuff we've talked about here that is in the purview of this 
Committee but also really need to focus on, you know, trying to 
get the same tax credit support that we've had for other energy 
technologies, including fossil.
    Mr. Beyer. Great, great. Thank you.
    Mr. Wipke, I only have 25 seconds, but our labs, how do we 
maximize them with the new hubs?
    Mr. Wipke. Well, I think, you know, we're going toward a 
national network here, and I think we need to make sure that 
the national labs are able to be used to support all of the 
hubs in a way that is most impactful. This is a turning point, 
a tipping point for hydrogen. We just want to all make sure 
that this is a big success.
    Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. Before we bring the hearing to a close, I 
want to thank our witnesses for testifying before the Committee 
today. The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional 
statements from the Members and for any additional questions 
the Committee may ask of the witnesses.
    The witnesses are excused, and the hearing is now 
adjourned. Thank you all so much for being here.
    [Whereupon, at 12:08 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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