The Hydrogen and Clean Fuels program closely coordinates with and supports the President’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative managed by DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office. Through partnerships with the private sector, the Initiative seeks to develop hydrogen, fuel cell, and infrastructure technologies needed to make it practical and cost-effective for large numbers of Americans to choose to use fuel cell vehicles by 2020. The initiative will dramatically improve America's energy security by significantly reducing the need for imported oil. At the same time, it is a key component of the President's clean air and climate change strategies. The President’s Advanced Energy Initiative provides for a 22-percent increase in funding for clean-energy technology research at the Department of Energy. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.

Hydrogen and Clean Fuels activities are part of a broad RD&D program conducted by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) to ensure that we can continue to rely on clean, affordable energy from our traditional fuel resources that supply 85% of the nation's energy. FE’s Clean Coal and Natural Gas Power Systems program sponsors RD&D on gasification technologies and on advanced power generation technologies such as fuel cells and gas turbines.  The Carbon Sequestration program develops technologies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capture, storage and sequestration. FE’s Advanced Research program is developing new materials, catalysts, instrumentation, sensors, and simulation techniques that will be used in advanced energy systems. These technologies under development in other FE programs are complementary to the Hydrogen and Clean Fuels program.  DOE’s restructured FutureGen project to test and demonstrate advanced technologies for co-production of electric power and hydrogen is also part of the FE program.  The figure below pictorially shows the relationships of these other DOE and FE programs with the Hydrogen and Clean Fuels program.