A framework for a hydrogen economy

Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University, a faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He served in the Obama administration as the Founding Director of the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) (2009–2012), as the Acting Undersecretary for Energy (2011–2012), and as the Vice Chair of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (2014–2017). Dr. Majumdar is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. John Deutch is an emeritus Institute Professor at MIT. He has served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of Science, and Provost. In the Carter administration, he served as Director of Energy Research (1977–1979), Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology (1979), and Undersecretary (1979–1980) in the US Department of Energy. He has been a member of the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee (1980–1981), the White House Science Council (1985–1989), the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1997–2001), and the Secretary of the Energy Advisory Board (2008–2017). He has published widely on the technical and policy aspects of energy and the environment. Ravi Prasher is an Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has more than 20 years of experience in working in R&D in large industry, startup, government, and academia. He was one of the first program directors at ARPA-E in the US Department of Energy. Prasher has published more than 100 papers on thermal energy science and technology and holds more than 30 patents. At UC Berkeley, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on thermal science and supervises multiple PhD students on various research topics, including thermochemical production of carbon-free hydrogen. Tom Griffin specializes in identifying high-impact technology investment opportunities in the manufacturing sector for Breakthrough Energy Ventures. He has over 25 years of industrial experience in applied technology development and deployment, including contributions over a wide range of energy and environmental sectors. He served as CTO at both Edeniq and Pennsylvania Sustainable Technologies (where was also co-founder), pursuing capabilities and applications in biofuels and catalytic fuel upgrading. Griffin was an officer in the US Nuclear Navy, directing operations of shipboard propulsion facilities. He holds SB, SM, and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and has authored or co-authored several granted patents.