Fact Sheet
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, DC
April 24, 2006


Purpose of Initiative

Additional Information Website: http://www.iphe.net

The International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy (IPHE) provides a mechanism to coordinate multinational research, development and deployment programs that advance the transition to a global hydrogen economy. The IPHE leverages limited public and private resources; reviews the progress of collaborative projects; identifies promising directions for research, development, demonstration, and commercial use; provides technical assessments for policy decisions; prioritizes, identifies gaps, and develops common recommendations for international codes, standards and safety protocols; and maintains communications with the private sector and other stakeholders to foster public-private collaboration that addresses the technological, financial and institutional barriers to a cost-competitive, standardized, widely accessible, safe and environmentally benign hydrogen economy.

Official Government Partners
Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Russia, United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Commission.

Non-Member Participants

International Organizations: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and International Energy Agency.

Civil Society and Private Sector: Individuals and members of industry associations with an interest in the hydrogen economy are informed about activities within the IPHE and are encouraged to participate and interact with the IPHE. Please see http://www.iphe.net/LGSA.htm for a list of the industry stakeholder associations that constitute the "IPHE Liaison Group of Stakeholders Associations."

Partnership Goals
The IPHE will be successful when the following factors characterize the world's transportation and stationary power sector:

• Hydrogen-powered vehicles are competitive with conventional vehicles;
• The price and availability of hydrogen are competitive with conventional fuels;
• Hydrogen fuel is conveniently available to hydrogen vehicle drivers, based on improved fueling and storage infrastructure;
• Hydrogen energy storage technologies will allow personal transportation systems to operate at the same levels of safety, performance and range as today's gasoline powered vehicles;
• An internationally consistent system of safety codes and standards related to hydrogen utilization is developed and adopted; and
• Distributed power generation using hydrogen fuel is cost competitive with traditional stationary power systems.

Progress Toward Goals
The inaugural IPHE Ministerial meeting was held November 19-21, 2003 in Washington DC. The IPHE's original 16 partners signed a "Terms of Reference" document and the partnership's Steering and Implementation-Liaison Committees held their initial meetings and charted their next steps.

Since the Ministerial meeting, the Partnership has added New Zealand as a member and each of the Committees have conducted five meetings (see italicized entries in the table in the Next Steps section) to organize the IPHE and facilitate activities that will achieve the goals of the IPHE.
Since its launch in 2003, the IPHE has:

• Established:
  o An active IPHE Secretariat, the principal coordinator of IPHE communications and activities;
  o An IPHE Evaluation Team to review proposed collaborative efforts;
  o A process for Stakeholder Involvement that allows both government and private sectors to work in partnership toward advancing the hydrogen economy.
  o A process for developing an IPHE Technology Priority Scorecard and Activities Matrix that will enable IPHE members to more effectively collaborate on research, development and demonstration (R,D&D) to address the key technology barriers to a hydrogen economy.
  
• Developed:
  o Working principles and criteria for IPHE endorsement of collaborative R,D&D projects and international events;
  o Scoping Papers to provide the foundation for the development of the Priority Scorecard and Activity Matrix. The papers summarize the current state of technology, identify technical barriers to commercial deployment, and further prioritize concrete projects, events and actions to be undertaken by IPHE Partners that will advance technology development and deployment
  o Outreach materials and web publications to disseminate information and increase awareness on the objectives of IPHE and the benefits of a hydrogen economy;
  o A series of international workshops to identify specific collaborative opportunities to advance the hydrogen economy. These workshops have led to collaborative project proposals on fuel cells; hydrogen production; hydrogen storage; regulations, codes and standards; socioeconomics of hydrogen; and hydrogen education.

IPHE Committee Meeting Schedule

Steering Committee	Implementation-Liaison Committee
1st - November 2003, Washington, DC 2nd - May 2004, China 3rd - January 2005, France 4th - September 2005, Japan 5th - April 2006, Canada 6th - September 2006, Iceland 7th - April 2007, Brazil 8th - October 2007, Italy	1st - November 2003, Washington, DC 2nd - March 2003, Germany 3rd - September 2004, Iceland 4th - March 2005, Brazil 5th - January 2006, China 6th - June 2006, France 7th - January/February 2007, UK 8th - June/July 2007, Korea 9th - January/February 2008, Germany 10th - June 2008, Australia

*NOTE: Bold entries are planned meetings.

Resources:
The USG hosts the IPHE Secretariat Office, including a Visiting Analyst from the Republic of Korea, through 2007. Other IPHE partners have provided financial and in-kind resources for meetings, workshops and conferences.

In 2003, President Bush committed to fund hydrogen fuel and fuel cell vehicle R,D,&D at $1.7 billion from FY 2004 - FY 2008. The USG is actively pursuing collaborative R,D&D projects and activities using the IPHE framework in order to effectively leverage the Presidential resource commitment with resources from the private sector and other IPHE members to advance the transition to the hydrogen economy.

USG Primary Points of Contact:

Department of Energy
Michael Mills
202-586-1394
michael.mills@ee.doe.gov

Department of State
Barbara Derosa-Joynt
202-647-4511
derosabm@state.gov

Department of Transportation
Anthony Swift
202-366-7107
anthony.swift@dot.gov

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