42 U.S.C. § 16157 — Demonstration

(a) In general — The Secretary must fund a limited number of demonstration projects, chosen for how mature, cost-effective, and environmentally sound their technology is. Where practical, the Secretary should favor projects that (1) use hydrogen at existing sites like office buildings, military bases, vehicle fleet centers, transit bus systems, or National Park units; (2) depend on reliable hydrogen power for essential activities; (3) help spread hydrogen technology into the marketplace; (4) demonstrate fuel cell and hydrogen technology in vehicles, portable devices, and stationary equipment; (5) address how hydrogen fuel cell demand and hydrogen fuel infrastructure depend on each other; (6) raise public awareness of hydrogen technology; (7) help identify the best technology among competing options; (8) address distributed power generation from renewable sources; (9) demonstrate hydrogen and fuel cell technology in national parks, remote islands, and tribal land, as the Secretary chooses; (10) demonstrate developing hydrogen and fuel cell systems for mobile, portable, and stationary uses — building on the Department's learning demonstrations — covering (A) light-duty vehicles, (B) heavy-duty vehicles, (C) fleet vehicles, (D) specialty industrial and farm vehicles, and (E) residential and commercial backup power; (11) following any regionally developed codes or standards, fund prototype and pilot hydrogen supply corridors along interstate highways in different climates; and (12) fund demonstrations of hydrogen blends, hybrid hydrogen, and hydrogen made from renewable farm fuels, including use in hybrid-electric and heavy-duty vehicles. The Secretary must favor projects that cover several of these twelve goals at once. (b) System demonstrations — (1) As part of the demonstration program, the Secretary must give cost-shared grants to chosen entities for (A) designing advanced composite vehicles under section 16122 that (i) mainly aim to cut how much energy it takes to drive the vehicle, (ii) after 2010, add another research phase — described in subsection (c) — building on the Department's learning demonstrations partnerships, and (iii) are managed through an expanded FreedomCAR program that gets manufacturers and governments into cost-shared projects; and (B) designing a local distributed energy system that (i) includes renewable hydrogen production, off-grid electricity, and fleet uses for industry or business, (ii) combines those uses — like stationary, portable, micro, and mobile fuel cells — into a dense residential or commercial building complex or farming community, and (iii) is run together with industry, state, tribal, and local governments, farm groups, and nonprofit electricity providers. (c) Identification of new program requirements — Working with the Task Force and Technical Advisory Committee, the Secretary must (1) after 2008 for stationary and portable uses, and after 2010 for vehicles, identify new requirements that sharpen the technology, planning, and applications; and (2) during the second phase of the learning demonstrations described in (b)(1)(A)(ii), redesign later program work to include those requirements. (d) Authorization of appropriations — Congress authorized $185,000,000 for fiscal year 2006; $200,000,000 for fiscal year 2007; $250,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; $300,000,000 for fiscal year 2009; $375,000,000 for fiscal year 2010; and whatever sums are needed for each fiscal year from 2011 through 2020.