energy strategy and the need for Ohio officials to seize that opportunity by convincing the U.S. Department of Energy to locate a clean hydrogen hub in the state. The experts confirmed what we have been saying since we formed the Alliance," Mr. Conrad said. "Now is the time for hydrogen, and the race for national and global leadership is on. We are doing everything in our power to ensure that Ohio wins that race."

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Here are excerpts from the article:

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For decades, government and industry have looked to hydrogen as a potentially game-changing tool in the quest for clean energy. As far back as the early days of the Clinton administration, energy sector observers and public policy experts have extolled the virtues of hydrogen — to the point that some people have joked that hydrogen is the energy of the future, “and always will be.”

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Even as wind and solar power have become commonplace in recent years, hydrogen has been held back by high costs and other challenges. But the fuel may finally be poised to have its moment. At the MIT Energy Initiative Spring Symposium — entitled “Hydrogen’s role in a decarbonized energy system” — experts discussed hydrogen production routes, hydrogen consumption markets, the path to a robust hydrogen infrastructure, and policy changes needed to achieve a “hydrogen future.”

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During one panel, “Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale,” four experts laid out existing and planned efforts to leverage hydrogen for decarbonization. 

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Huyen N. Dinh, a senior scientist and group manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is the director of HydroGEN, a consortium of several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories that accelerates research and development of innovative and advanced water splitting materials and technologies for clean, sustainable, and low-cost hydrogen production.

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For the past 14 years, Dinh has worked on fuel cells and hydrogen production for NREL. “We think that the 2020s is the decade of hydrogen,” she said. Dinh believes that the energy carrier is poised to come into its own over the next few years, pointing to several domestic and international activities surrounding the fuel and citing a Hydrogen Council report that projected the future impacts of hydrogen — including 30 million jobs and $2.5 trillion in global revenue by 2050. “Now is the time for hydrogen, and the global race is on,” she said

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“We’re very excited to see hydrogen go from a [research and development] conversation to a commercial conversation,” Colleen Wright, vice president of corporate strategy for Constellation said. “We’ve been calling it a little bit of a ‘middle-school dance.’ Everybody is standing around the circle, waiting to see who’s willing to put something at stake. But this is real. We’re not dancing around the edges. There are a lot of people who are big players, who are willing to put skin in the game today.”