The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded researchers at the University of Chicago $12.5 million to advance work aimed at finding innovative solutions for long-lasting hydrogen energy research — potentially offering a zero-emission alternative to fossil fuels.

The Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center, or CD4DC, will be the first center of its kind based at the University of Chicago and will be led by Laura Gagliardi, the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the Department of Chemistry, and the James Franck Institute.

(…) The Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center will be one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Centers, a program which was established in 2009 and is designed to bring together creative, multi-disciplinary scientific teams to tackle the toughest scientific challenges preventing advances in energy technologies.

(…) The CD4DC will also partner with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, Clemson University, Northwestern University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Minnesota.

Read more here.