The US Department of Energy has approved a $504.4 million loan guarantee to assist with the construction of the world’s biggest hydrogen storage facility. Hydrogen is a gas that may be created using renewable energy and utilized to generate electricity.
The Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in Delta, Utah, will store green hydrogen and subsequently burn it as a fuel for the Intermountain Power Agency’s Renewed Project, a hydrogen-capable gas turbine, a combined cycle power plant that aims to be 100% clean hydrogen-fueled by 2045.
The loan guarantee was the LPO’s first for a new sustainable energy technology project since 2014. The LPO has around $40 billion available to invest in sectors such as fuel-efficient and sophisticated technology cars, innovative nuclear power projects, and clean-energy initiatives.
“The first step in harnessing clean hydrogen’s potential to decarbonize our economy, create good-paying clean energy jobs, and enable more renewables to be added to the grid is to accelerate commercial deployment of clean hydrogen as a zero-emission, long-term energy storage solution,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
As part of the administration’s ambition to decarbonize the electric grid by 2035, DOE issued a notice of intent to support a separate $8 billion initiative to create regional hydrogen hubs. Last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill provided the funding.
