Fuel, Eagles, Fuel

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently capped its celebration of National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day with an end-zone dance. On Oct. 11, 2024, representatives from DOE, the Philadelphia Eagles, PDC Machines, and several small businesses in the hydrogen and fuel cell industry gathered at Lincoln Financial Field to make use of the stadium's newest feature: a state-of-the-art hydrogen fueling station. This unit can produce up to 10 kilograms of hydrogen per day and support both fuel-cell-powered trucks and passenger vehicles.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology has immense potential to decarbonize the transportation sector. Clean-burning hydrogen allows vehicles to operate on the same scale of time and distance as their gas-powered counterparts, while generating no pollution and only water vapor at the tail pipe. As with all electric vehicles, drivers also benefit from higher torque, lower maintenance costs, and a range of tax benefits.

The Eagles' new fueling station, known as SimpleFuel and developed by PDC Machines, is the latest in a series of green initiatives undertaken by the organization. The Eagles' stadium complex is coated with more than 10,000 solar panels, and the electricity they produce flows directly to the SimpleFuel unit, making the Eagles the first professional sports team in North America to make use of clean hydrogen that is produced on site.

Representatives from DOE's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), PDC Machines, and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. From left to right: Elizabeth "Ebby" Brennan, fellow, HFTO; Dr. Sunita Satyapal, director, HFTO; Nick Michaels, director, corporate partnership at Philadelphia Eagles; Dr. Shaylynn Crum-Dacon, technology manager, HFTO; Caitlyn Ott, corporate partnership activation associate at Philadelphia Eagles; Jesse Goldberg, marketing associate, PDC Machines, LLC.

The visit to Eagles' stadium was the culmination of a long and fruitful collaboration between DOE and the minds behind SimpleFuel. It began in 2017, when three companies, including PDC, hatched an idea for a simple, small-scale hydrogen fueler that uses only water and electricity to produce hydrogen. In 2017, the SimpleFuel concept claimed the $1 million prize in DOE's H2 Refuel H-Prize Competition. On the strength of this new funding and the validation of DOE experts, SimpleFuel made the leap from concept to commercialization. In the intervening seven years, PDC has brought SimpleFuel to both domestic and international markets, growing from a small business to an important player in the clean hydrogen technology industry.

The success of SimpleFuel is the latest indication that clean hydrogen infrastructure is catching up to recent advances in clean hydrogen applications. Lately, the United States has massively increased its stock of electrolyzers-the devices that produce hydrogen from water and electricity. Today, there are 4.5 gigawatts of planned or installed electrolyzer capacity in the U.S., roughly 25 times more than our capacity in 2021. As a result, hydrogen has a growing role in our transportation system-especially in heavy duty transportation and niche markets like material-handling applications. More than 70,000 hydrogen-powered forklifts are already moving consumer goods in America's warehouses, and we've seen increased investment in clean hydrogen for heavy-duty transportation, such as long-haul trucks and transit buses. As this market expands, DOE's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office continues to find opportunities to stimulate technical innovation in a field that can drastically reduce emissions from transportation and other hard-to-decarbonize sectors, including heavy industries like steel and aluminum.

The process that brought on-site hydrogen fueling to Lincoln Financial Field had all the hallmarks of a well-drawn play: ingenuity, collaboration, and a bit of patience. It might not compare to the action on the field, but the SimpleFuel unit marks the spot where DOE and its private-sector partners completed their version of a Hail Mary pass.