The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $750 million to 52 projects across 24 states aimed at reducing the cost of clean hydrogen and increasing the available supply.
The projects were funded under President Biden’s $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed in 2021.
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The DOE claims that the projects are expected to enable US manufacturing capacity to produce 14 gigawatts of fuel cells per year, and 10GW of electrolyzers per year, enough to produce an additional 1.3 million tons of clean hydrogen per year.
Funding was split across six categories - electrolyzer manufacturing, electrolyzer supply chain, electrolyzer components, fuel cell manufacturing, fuel cell supply chain, and recycling.
Among those awarded funds is Plug Power, a fuel cell company that earlier this month said that it expected its sales to data center companies to begin to pick up in late 2025.
Data center firms have looked to hydrogen as a potential diesel replacement for backup power and, eventually, the primary power source.
Plug's CEO Andrew Marsh revealed in the company's latest earnings call that the "three major data center operators" were testing its products, likely referencing hyperscalers Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
The latter cloud company deployed a 3MW Plug Power hydrogen system in 2022. Earlier this year, Microsoft said that it had partnered with Caterpillar to power a data center for 48 hours using hydrogen fuel cells from Ballard Power Systems.
Both Caterpillar and Ballard are also recipients of the latest round of DOE funding.
Other recipients include General Motors, Nuvera, Robert Bosch, and 3M.
