Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources stressed the importance of clean hydrogen to America’s decarbonisation efforts and highlighted the historic levels of funding included in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to accelerate its deployment.

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He also highlighted the suitability of West Virginia as having abundant supplies of the natural resources needed to produce and the infrastructure and economic sectors needed to transport and use clean hydrogen.

Speaking on this, Manchin said, “Clean hydrogen is a game-changing fuel that we can produce right here at home from our abundant resources and use it to decarbonise different sectors of the economy while supporting our energy independence…

“As with many emerging technologies, we need to invest in the entire hydrogen value chain to bring down the cost and overcome deployment barriers.

“That is why I made research, development, and demonstration of these technologies a central part of the Energy Infrastructure Act, which this committee reported with bipartisan support last year and which was subsequently included in the recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“In that bill, we fund $9.5bn in research, development, and demonstration of clean hydrogen and we task the Department of Energy to develop a national strategy and roadmap to get us to a clean hydrogen economy.”

Dr. Sunita Satyapal, Director of the Hydrogen and Fuel Technologies Office at the US Department of Energy, said, “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law hydrogen provisions, in addition to sustained annual appropriations, provide a tremendous opportunity for the United States to address many of these challenges and accelerate the manufacturing and roll out of hydrogen technologies and enable a competitive, sustainable market.

“DOE’s funding has already led to more than 1,100 US patents in hydrogen and fuel cells and over 30 commercial technologies in the market, along with more than 65 technologies that could be commercial in the next several years.”