A Road Map to a U.S. Hydrogen Economy has been developed by a coalition of oil and gas, power, automotive and other industrial concerns to outline how the nation can expand its global energy leadership by scaling up activity in the rapidly emerging and evolving hydrogen economy.

The document underscores the versatility of hydrogen as an enabler of the renewable energy system, an energy vector that can be transported and stored, and a fuel for the transportation sector, heating of buildings and providing heat and feedstock to industry. It can reduce both carbon and local emissions, increase energy security and strengthen the economy, and support the deployment of renewable power generation such as wind, solar, nuclear and hydro. By scaling up across sectors, hydrogen demand in the U.S. could reach 17 million metric tons by 2030 and 63 million metric tons by 2050, roughly equivalent to 14% of energy demand.

The U.S. is already fostering a hydrogen economy with hundreds of millions of dollars of public and private investment per year, and boasting more than half the world’s fuel cell vehicles, 25,000 fuel cell material handling vehicles, more than 8,000 small scale fuel systems in 40 states, and more than 550 MW of large-scale fuel cell power installed or planned. For the transportation sector, hydrogen enables the adoption of electric vehicles in high-asset utilization applications like long-haul trucking.

A phased approach is advocated for building on existing hydrogen use cases to expand to new ones. Source: McKinsey