Over the past three years, more than 70 electric utilities, serving roughly 81 percent of American customers, have launched significant carbon emissions pledges. Concurrently, many have made clear in those pledges that they need firm, flexible clean energy. Thankfully, clean energy innovation and huge investment in sectors like nuclear energy, carbon capture, and geothermal is turning goals into reality.

Today, hydrogen is mainly used as a chemical in industry for oil refining and fertilizer production, but it has the potential to be another player in the clean energy innovation game. Like electricity, hydrogen is a carrier for energy from any source to virtually any end use. The smallest element on the periodic table could unlock some of the biggest energy challenges — electricity grid resilience, energy storage, and industrial decarbonization.

We’re still in the early days of developing the hydrogen ecosystem. This makes the federal government’s role to establish the rules of the road (or to help pave the road) and to seed critical R&D activities that can pay dividends in the future critically important.

Metals are an integral part of our society. Ranging from basic steels to high-performance alloys, metals are a necessary resource in transporting electricity on the grid, constructing buildings, producing everyday kitchen and household items, creating bridges and tunnels, and building trains, cars and even planes.

Since the Roman Empire, cement and concrete have been used as a building block of societies. Today, concrete is the most used man-made material on the planet, used in everything from roads to buildings and more.

Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the universe, yet this tiny molecule has huge potential to connect energy generation, energy storage, transportation, and industry. It’s been nearly 20 years since hydrogen has gotten as much press and attention as it is today – a resurgence likely due to the revelation that more than the electricity sector must be decarbonized to tackle climate change.