The Center for Hydrogen Safety (CHS) recently announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has joined CHS as a strategic partner working to advance hydrogen safety actions and ideas worldwide.
“As the federal agency that regulates the safety of our nation’s critical hydrogen transportation infrastructure, PHMSA is pleased to join the Center for Hydrogen Safety to share our expertise in the proper handling, storage and transportation of hydrogen,” said PHMSA Deputy Administrator Tristan Brown. “Since 2021, PHMSA has invested nearly $11 million in research projects aimed at improving the safety of transporting and storing hydrogen through the use of America’s pipeline infrastructure, including underground storage. These investments, coupled with [CHS’s] work, have only become more important as America continues to turn to hydrogen as an important decarbonization tool.”
CHS is a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and various global stakeholders. Its members work together to advance the safe handling and storage of hydrogen across commercial and industrial applications while also providing a common global platform to ensure hydrogen safety information, guidance and expertise are available to stakeholders worldwide.
According to the press statement from AIChE, having both the DOE and PHMSA collaborating on hydrogen safety further strengthens the
Hydrogen Interagency Task Force’s (HIT) objective of leveraging federal agency capabilities to execute the national clean hydrogen strategy and accelerate the growth of America’s emerging clean energy economy. CHS currently serves a crucial role to the HIT by sharing information on a range of safety and compliance issues, including potential impacts to communities.
According to CHS Executive Director Nick Barilo, PHMSA’s technical and policy expertise will provide an invaluable pathway to better understanding critical factors surrounding the safe transportation of hydrogen.
“PHMSA’s mission is comprehensive and deeply impactful,” Barilo noted, “and their strategic approach to hazardous material transportation safety is broadly recognized and valued.”
PHMSA’s scope of regulation, compliance and safety encompasses more than 3.3 million miles of regulated domestic pipelines, 1.2 million daily shipments of hazardous materials, and 1.6 billion tons of hazardous materials shipped annually across all modes of transport.
