Advanced Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies to Drive National Goals | DE FOA 0003439

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0003439

The Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), through its Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), is offering funding under Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) DE-FOA-0003439 titled "Advanced Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies to Drive National Goals." The grant is set up to fund research, development, and demonstration work that helps move clean hydrogen and fuel cell technologies from the lab toward real-world deployment. The program is designed to support national decarbonization priorities by pushing technology innovation, reducing costs, and expanding adoption of clean hydrogen in sectors where cutting emissions is especially difficult.

A key theme of the opportunity is alignment with major federal strategies and initiatives. Projects are expected to support the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, including its "whole-of-government" approach that coordinates multiple agencies to tackle barriers to clean hydrogen at scale. The NOFO also ties directly to the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, with an emphasis on enabling wider clean hydrogen use in critical transportation segments such as heavy-duty vehicles. In addition, the funding is positioned to advance the Hydrogen Energy Earthshot goal of reaching clean hydrogen at $1 per kilogram by 2031, and to contribute to DOE's H2@Scale initiative, which focuses on improving hydrogen production, transport, storage, and end use across multiple parts of the economy.

The NOFO is intentionally split into two documents to make the process easier to navigate. Part 1 contains the NOFO-specific content applicants need to focus on first, including the program goals, topic areas, eligibility rules, and the criteria reviewers will use to evaluate applications. Part 2 contains the broader, standard DOE/EERE requirements that apply across many funding opportunities, including detailed instructions for submission, requirements that apply after selection, award negotiation expectations, and post-award compliance and reporting obligations. Applicants are expected to read and follow both parts, since Part 1 tells you what the program wants to fund and how proposals will be judged, while Part 2 covers the full set of administrative and legal requirements that come with receiving a DOE cooperative agreement.

Funding will be issued through cooperative agreements, which generally means DOE expects substantial involvement during the project period (for example, through technical coordination, milestone reviews, and ongoing project management engagement), rather than a hands-off grant structure. The opportunity is managed through DOE's Golden Field Office. The program anticipates making about 22 awards, with an award ceiling of $10,000,000 per project, indicating that DOE is looking for efforts large enough to meaningfully advance technology readiness, validation, scale-up, or demonstrations that can accelerate market adoption.

Eligibility is broad for domestic applicants and includes institutions of higher education, for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, and Indian Tribes as defined by federal statute. The listing of eligible applicant types also explicitly includes small businesses, other than small businesses (larger for-profits), public and private universities, school districts, special district governments, and certain housing authorities and tribal organizations. At the same time, several participation limits are clearly spelled out: DOE/NNSA federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) cannot apply as the prime recipient but may participate as subrecipients; the same prime-recipient restriction applies to non-DOE/NNSA FFRDCs and to other federal agencies and instrumentalities (other than DOE), which may only join as subrecipients. Foreign entities can participate, but only with explicit written waiver requests: a foreign entity applying as the main applicant must include a waiver request, and applicants proposing foreign subrecipients must include a separate waiver request for each foreign subrecipient. The NOFO also states that certain 501(c)(4) nonprofits that engaged in lobbying activities after December 31, 1995 are not eligible to apply, which is an important screening detail for organizations that might otherwise assume nonprofit status alone is sufficient.

The application deadline listed for the opportunity is January 31, 2025. Overall, this NOFO is aimed at building out the technology base and practical demonstrations needed to make clean hydrogen and fuel cells cheaper, easier to deploy, and more widely used, while directly supporting federal cost and decarbonization targets in transportation and other high-impact sectors.

• The Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Advanced Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies to Drive National Goals" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.087.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-10-23.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-01-31. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $10,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 22 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Individuals, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for DE FOA 0003439

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