US Hydrogen Policy: Paving the Way for Energy Independence, Technology Leadership and Decarbonization

The U.S. is a leading actor in today’s hydrogen economy and possesses significant geo-economic potential to lead in the global clean hydrogen economy. The U.S. hydrogen strategy has been shaped by the strive to balance a) energy independence b) the fight against climate change, and c) expanding technology leadership. The recent landmark legislative packages of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act reflect these priorities and include large-scale investments and financial incentives to promote the supply of clean hydrogen at lower costs, to strengthen innovation, and domestic value chains. The U.S. has been pioneering policy instruments for scaling up domestic clean hydrogen production and use cases across multiple sectors, which raised significant interest among policymakers and industrial actors worldwide. The international dimension of the U.S. hydrogen strategy has received much less attention in the U.S. policy debate and is less defined. This is apparent in comparison with other actors, such as a much more outward-oriented European Union, which reached out to numerous countries as potential trading partners for much-needed hydrogen imports. In contrast, the United States currently focuses much more on building up domestic hydrogen value chains, enabled by a favorable resource endowment. Nevertheless, the U.S. has fostered bilateral partnerships on hydrogen and strengthened its hydrogen-related engagement in international organizations and multilateral initiatives in the past five years. Emerging priorities for the United States' international collaboration on hydrogen include international demand creation and management, upscaling investments, international research collaborations, and joint efforts on regulation, standards, and certification. These efforts can be seen as the first steps towards the U.S. long-term goal to export hydrogen and related technologies to regional and global partners from the 2030s onwards.