Berkeley Lab in California has just been awarded $8 million from the US Department of Energy for two of their projects: one to find new materials for hydrogen storage and another for optimizing fuel-cell performance and durability. The grant, from the Fuel Cell Technologies Office, shows that the American government is taking hydrogen as a serious contender alongside other next-generation energy technologies.
Jeff Urban, the HyMARC lead scientist for Berkeley Lab, said: “Berkeley Lab brings to the consortium a combination of innovation in H2 storage materials, surface and interface science, controlled nanoscale synthesis, world-class user facilities for characterizing nanoscale materials, and predictive materials genome capabilities.”