Biden's hydrogen tax credit unveiled as administration tries to jump start industry

The Biden administration released its highly anticipated proposal for doling out billions of dollars in tax credits to hydrogen producers Friday, in a massive effort to build out an industry that some hope can be a cleaner alternative to fossil fueled power.

The U.S. credit is the most generous in the world for hydrogen production, Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton University who has analyzed the U.S. climate law, said last week.

The proposal — which is part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act passed last year — outlines a tiered system to determine which hydrogen producers get the most credits, with cleaner energy projects receiving more, and smaller, but still meaningful credits going to those that use fossil fuel to produce hydrogen.

Administration officials estimate the hydrogen production credits will deliver $140 billion in revenue and 700,000 jobs by 2030 — and will help the U.S. produce 50 million metric tons of hydrogen by 2050.

“That’s equivalent to the amount of energy currently used by every bus, every plane, every train and every ship in the US combined,” Energy Deputy Secretary David M. Turk said on a Thursday call with reporters to preview the proposal.

That may be a useful metric for comparison, but it's a long way from reality. Buses, planes, trains and ships run on liquid fuels for which a delivery infrastructure exists, and no such system exists to deliver cleanly-made hydrogen to the places where it could most help address climate change. Those include steel, cement and plastics factories.