The Road To Green Hydrogen Is Paved With Deuterium

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Green hydrogen stakeholders in the US shed many a tear after US President Donald Trump shredded a $7 billion, Biden-era program aimed at expanding and decarbonizing the US hydrogen supply pipeline. Still, signs of life keep sprouting up in niche applications, and the startup Aternium is plumbing deuterium for just such an opportunity.

The Hydrogen-Deuterium Connection

For those of you new to the topic, hydrogen is the grease that greases the wheels of modern industrialized economies, playing a featured role in key industries including refining and metallurgy along with food processing, fertilizer, and pharmaceuticals. However, hydrogen is also a decarbonization conundrum. Almost all of the hydrogen produced in the US comes from natural gas. The global supply chain is similar, consisting mostly of natural gas with a portion of coal, too.

On the plus side, alternatives have been emerging. The Biden-era “Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs” program was both a decarbonization measure and an effort to improve the security of the hydrogen supply chain by jumping on new alternatives. It was funded by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which earmarked some of the funds for natural gas with carbon capture. Most of the funding pot, though, went to projects that leveraged regional resources including biomass and renewable energy, with the renewables being deployed to push so-named green hydrogen from water in electrolysis systems.

So much for the Hydrogen Hubs program, which went through the shredder after Trump sailed into office last year. Still, the price of green hydrogen has been dropping with advances in electrolyzer technology. Aternium has come up with a system that leverages technology improvements alongside the co-production of deuterium oxide, enabling it to offer high purity green hydrogen at a competitive price.

Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen. It is chemically identical to hydrogen but it features one proton, one neutron, and one electron.

Like hydrogen, deuterium can be sourced from water. “Deuterium isotopes are distributed in molecules that contain hydrogen, including, importantly, in all forms of water – also water in our bodies,” explains the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Deuterium oxide (aka heavy water) is commonly used in caner research. It also supports essential defense industries and advanced manufacturing systems. Aternium lists semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, advanced electronics, nuclear energy,  and emerging fusion technologies among other uses.

Green Hydrogen Comes To Delaware

On August 4, Aternium announced that its first deuterium/green hydrogen facility will be constructed at Garrison Oak Technical Park in the city of Dover, Delaware, pending a close of sale on the property later this year. The Technical Park hosts both a solar power plant and a natural gas power plant, though grid connections may provide additional options. The gas power plant will not play a role, according to Aternium. The startup emphasizes that it is committed to renewable electricity for its operations, with plans to add more wind and solar as it expands its footprint beyond Delaware into New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“The facility will serve as Aternium’s flagship U.S. deployment and represents a major step toward establishing a secure domestic supply of heavy water, also known as deuterium oxide, and high purity hydrogen for strategic U.S. industries,” Aternium explained in a press statement.

“Today, the United States lacks commercial-scale domestic heavy water production, leaving key sectors dependent on adversarial foreign sources for a material increasingly relevant to energy security, advanced manufacturing, and national competitiveness,” the company elaborated.

Renewable Energy And The Mid-Atlantic Connection

The company’s plans for expanding in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are interesting, considering the renewable energy state of play in the mid-Atlantic region. New Jersey, for example, has precious little space available for the kind of large scale solar power plants now commonly found in Texas and elsewhere in less sparsely populated regions of the US. New Jersey did have an ambitious, multi-gigawatt offshore wind plan in motion as recently as 2024, but parts of the plan were on shaky ground before Trump took office last year, and activity ground to a halt thereafter.

Delaware is also a small state with limited space for solar and large potential for offshore wind. To its advantage, though, Delaware shares the Delmarva Peninsula with Maryland and Virginia. In 2024 the US Department of the Interior approved the 2.2-gigawatt Maryland Offshore Wind Project to serve Delmarva. That particular project has so far managed to survive local opponents and Trump’s war on offshore wind, with the support of state officials.

Another Mid-Atlantic project to beat the Trump chopper is CVOW, the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project. In addition, Virginia voters sent renewables-friendly Abigail Spanberger into the Governor’s office on Election Day 2025, replacing Republican Glenn Youngkin.

The wild card is Pennsylvania, where the natural gas lobby holds sway and offshore wind is not a factor, at least not directly. Still, when the Biden-era Energy Department selected candidates for funding through the $7 billion Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs plan back in 2023, it sliced the state in half. Western Pennsylvania was tapped to participate the ARCH2 gas-centric hub with carbon capture, alongside its fellow Appalachian states of West Virginia and Ohio. In contrast, the eastern part of the state was joined with the renewables-oriented MACH2 hub, with MACH2 being short for Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub.

The general idea behind MACH2 is to repurpose the region’s copious fossil energy infrastructure and rights-of-way for green hydrogen, with nuclear power plants also playing a role in water electrolysis alongside wind and solar.

“The Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub will help unlock hydrogen-driven decarbonization in the Mid-Atlantic region. MACH2 plans to develop hydrogen production facilities from renewables and nuclear energy using both established and innovative electrolyzer technologies, where it can help reduce costs and drive further technology adoption,” the Energy Department explains.

How Did MACH2 Survive?

To the shock and surprise of nobody, the ARCH2 hub is reportedly moving forward with up to $750 million in funding from the Trump administration, though private investors will have to come up with another $2 billion or more to get things moving.

MACH2 partners also expected a $750 million assist while US President Joe Biden was still in office. Improbably, as of last fall the door was still open, though that was probably on account of the nuclear energy angle. On August 4 of this year, Delaware Public Radio reported that the MACH2 hydrogen hub was still alive and kicking, though it received only a “fraction” of the anticipated federal support.

DPR also noted that Aternium is not counting on either the MACH2 or federal subsidies to support its business model, so it’s game on for green hydrogen as a market-enabled force here in the US. Thoughts? Drop a note in the discussion thread…

Image: The US startup Aternium aims to crack the green hydrogen code with a new electrolysis system powered by renewable energy and co-producing deuterium (courtesy of Aternium).