Celebrate Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day with the Energy Department

The sixth National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day will take place on October 8, 2020, and we hope you’ll join the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office in celebrating advances in hydrogen and fuel cells.

Aptly chosen to represent hydrogen’s atomic weight of 1.008, DOE and stakeholders worldwide will be commemorating Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day on October 8 with announcements and virtual events throughout the week.

Hydrogen and fuel cells have come a long way! Interest is ramping up across multiple end-uses, including trucks, maritime, rail, the grid, and industrial processes where the integration of hydrogen and fuel cells can add economic, environmental, and energy resiliency benefits. The amount of fuel cell power shipped just surpassed 1 gigawatt, a third of a million stationary fuel cells are powering global operations, and more than 470 hydrogen stations are serving 25,000 fuel cells cars worldwide.

In the United States, more than 35,000 hydrogen fuel cell forklifts help move goods at supermarkets, warehouses, and logistics facilities, and 500 MW of stationary fuel cell power ensures cell phone towers and other critical loads stay on. Large-scale hydrogen-use applications are gaining momentum, and activities that demonstrate the value of integrating hydrogen and fuel cell systems in data centers, ports, and in steel making are ramping up.

While we’ve made significant progress as a community, the work doesn’t end here. We need to work together to overcome cost, volume, and technology obstacles to unlock the full potential of hydrogen and fuel cells. At DOE, we are doing this through a number of areas including H2@Scale—a vision to enable affordable hydrogen generation, transport, storage, and use in the United States. As we drive down costs through H2@scale research at labs and demonstration activities with industry, hydrogen can more successfully be integrated into our economy and play a substantial role in emissions reductions and energy resiliency across multiple sectors.

We are not alone in this effort. Many countries and regions released roadmaps that highlight the role hydrogen plays in their energy future. Global initiatives, including the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE), the Clean and Hydrogen Energy Ministerials, the International Energy Agency, and Mission Innovation are bringing countries together to share lessons learned and accelerate progress.

As October 8 approaches, we invite you to explore some of the resources on our website and use them to increase awareness about how far hydrogen and fuel cells have come and what more needs to be done.

We encourage you to celebrate with us and offer some suggested activities:

• Follow EERE on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and share our social media posts on hydrogen and fuel cells using #FuelCellsNow and #HydrogenNow.
• Increase your H2IQ by tuning in to the H2IQ Hour on October 8, which will highlight three H2@Scale demonstration projects in the U.S.
• Test your H2IQ by taking the hydrogen and fuel cell quiz and challenge your friends to do it as well!
• Learn about the types of jobs you can find in hydrogen and fuel cells by using the career map.
• Keep up with global hydrogen and fuel cells activities by following @The_IPHE.

We hope you’ll join us in spreading the word so that others can also learn why hydrogen and fuel cells are important to a more secure, clean, and resilient energy future.

To learn more about hydrogen and fuel cells, and the research and development work DOE supports to accelerate progress in this exciting technology, please visit our website.