Jason Smeak | AECOM

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Presentation Description

With the U.S. Federal Government’s newly established and first-in-kind National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, Transportation Decarbonization Roadmap, Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy, Clean Hydrogen Standard, and a myriad of funding and incentives via Hydrogen Hub program funding and IRA tax incentives (45V, 45R), the United States is applying a whole of government approach to establishing a hydrogen economy and bringing about systematic change to energy, transportation, and industry.

U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs) program has selected seven regional hubs to both endorse and incentivize the development of a national clean hydrogen network via over $7B in grant funding. A hydrogen Hub is defined as a network that connects clean hydrogen producers, potential clean hydrogen consumers, and connective infrastructure located in close proximity to each other. These Hydrogen hubs are widely becoming viewed as specific regional geographies that are globally significant genesis points for new green hydrogen production, transmission, and offtake.

Seeking to decarbonize “hard-to-abate” sectors, such as ports and marine, freight rail, medium and heavy-duty trucking, aviation, and off-highway equipment, the hubs are working to catalyze the matching up of hydrogen production and transportation uses to drive down costs, demonstrate and commercialize new technology solutions, and ultimately propel us towards a net-zero transportation network for the nation— via a sustainable hydrogen economy.

As transportation and industrial clusters decarbonize with increasing pace and complexity, part of the development trend is that transportation infrastructure is at the nexus of evolving energy “transition clusters.” These transition clusters are where activity around new energy development, such as for hydrogen and renewables, industrial decarbonization, logistics activity and mobility, and transportation decarbonization are occurring simultaneously while taking advantage of synergies and collective efforts to spur transformation and overcome challenges. For example, marine ports often serve as a central element of transition clusters given their scale and volume of activity, industrial connectivity, multi-modal transportation and supporting infrastructure, and location within major urban centers.

This session will explore the exciting developments in hydrogen within the transportation space, with current insights on the establishment and progress of incentives and governmental direction that are helping to spur significant public and private investment and overcome challenges for transportation’s energy transformation. The establishment of hydrogen hub economies centering around energy transition clusters and rapidly-evolving technology across multiple transportation modes indicate a bright future for transportation’s use of hydrogen as a clean future fuel.

Speaker Biography

Jason Smeak is AECOM’s global lead for supply chain and logistics advisory within AECOM Transportation’s Global Goods Movement team. He brings an experience set covering the Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return and Enable processes of supply chain management. Jason is a systems-thinker who understands global supply chains from a business and operational standpoint. He has worked within the manufacturing and distribution sector for over 20 years, aiding public and private entities with supply chain strategy, commodities assessment, process definition and gap analyses, operations improvements, freight planning, ESG and decarbonization strategy, resiliency, and new technology and energy transformation implementations. His experience and advisory capability is multi-modal in nature— covering freight rail, ports and marine, medium and heavy-duty commercial trucking, off-highway equipment, and air cargo and advanced air mobility. Jason often works at the intersection of freight and passenger transportation, driving transportation sustainability and resiliency efforts both internally and externally as AECOM’s Global Transportation ESG Lead and Americas Hydrogen Transportation Market Lead.

Co-presenters

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