With President-elect Donald Trump set to return to the White House, the future is still uncertain for Delaware’s potential move for millions of federal dollars in hopes of investing in clean hydrogen gas.
In late 2023, Delaware joined forces with Pennsylvania and New Jersey, successfully bidding for the chance to receive part of $750 million in grant funding to support the research, production and distribution of hydrogen as the area’s next energy source. Together, as the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2), the three states worked for a year to draft a 10-year plan to disseminate funds amongst several universities, businesses and governments.
While the $750 million proposal is among the smallest of seven accepted by the U.S. Department of Energy, congressional officials believe it could support around 20,000 jobs in the region. Delaware may be best positioned to take advantage of the opportunity, as companies like Air Liquide and Bloom Energy have been working on hydrogen production and storage while others, like W. L. Gore & Associates and Versogen, have been working on membranes that are key to electrolysis.
But while President Joe Biden envisioned green hydrogen as the next renewable energy source and backed it through two of his landmark bills, Trump has publicly supported export and production of fossil fuels again. But he has yet to make his position clear on clean hydrogen.
That leaves a lot of questions unanswered for
MACH2, which is one of the few remaining hubs to have its proposal approved by the U.S. DOE.
“I think the new administration might slow things down,” said Dora Cheatham, who was one of the architects to the MACH2 proposal. “Five out of seven hubs have been signed, and at the end of the day, I do think that most will be signed. My hope is that if [the administration] looks at it like a business opportunity, there’s so much value in it.”
For months, the people behind MACH2 have been meeting with stakeholders to gauge a sense of the systems built to disseminate and use the funds. Since the hydrogen hub program works like a match grant, the private sector partners would have to agree to fund engineering and development costs first. It also means a project management structure that crosses federal regulations, as well as those in the three states, must be established before a proposal is submitted and approved.
As of Dec. 16, negotiations are still ongoing, although MACH2 representatives told the Delaware Business Times they anticipated making an announcement very soon. MACH2 Chief Operating Officer Manny Citron said that he and others in the consortium were optimistic about the path forward for hydrogen and the federal program.
"It has been heartening to hear President Trump express his commitment to new jobs and initiatives that will help drive forward projects, like clean, locally produced, hydrogen, which will strengthen America's energy portfolio and security,” Citron said in an emailed statement.
Trump has been critical of hydrogen and called for repealing the spending provisions created through Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but with “green” hydrogen derived from water electrolysis, there could be a case for the incoming administration to stick to the course Biden set, according to Saleem Ali, the chair of University of Delaware’s Energy and the Environment Geography and Spatial Sciences Department.
“I do think there’s likely to be more willingness to engage if only the focus is on green hydrogen but it’s important in how we message it. If we can decouple it from green energy, solar and wind power, and other incentives supported by the IRA, it should work because much of the criticism of the Biden agenda has been focused around subsidies for wind rather than hydrogen,” Ali said.
While the H2H grant program was funded through $7 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, it’s unlikely that it would be clawed back unilaterally without an act from Congress. But there’s a strong change that the IRA environmental provisions could be watered down - but Ali pointed out that most of the jobs created through the green investment from the IRA overwhelmingly benefited Republican congressional districts.
“Some of this rhetoric is really meant for elections and it’s not going to come to pass. It’s the same thing that happened with the Affordable Care Act. There was a lot of fire and brimstone around it, but now that things have settled, there’s a realization of how it benefits their district,” Ali said.
Others who are forging a path in the hydrogen economy are optimistic for MACH2, like Cheatham.
She and Andrew Cottone recently started a new company intent on manufacturing hydrogen, hopefully right here in the First State.
“In 2025, we’re hoping to finalize our land purchase and connect with the community and potential customers of hydrogen,” she said. “With or without federal funding, we plan to move forward.”
