- Client: Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking (FCH 2 JU)
- Implementation period: July, 2019 - January, 2020 (Ongoing)
- Geographic coverage: European Union
- Theme: Energy
- Topic: Energy Policy
- Experts: Luc van Nuffel, Jessica Yearwood Travezán, Tycho Smit, Frank Gérard
To what extent can hydrogen technologies lead to increased jobs, growth, environmental sustainability and energy security?
The transition to a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 requires drastic changes in Europe’s energy system. Electrification and sector coupling, including end-use sector coupling and cross-vector integration, are expected to play a pivotal role in the decarbonisation of the European energy system, and hydrogen is considered as a cornerstone in this transition.
The EU Member States are currently developing their National Energy & Climate Plans (NECPs), which determine the pathways that will be followed by the Member States to reach the 2030 energy and climate targets. If the EU wants to capture the full benefits of deploying hydrogen technologies, it is important that they are properly considered at this stage by the Member States and that the opportunities for hydrogen technologies to contribute to the energy transition are known. As such, the project focuses on the opportunities in terms of jobs, growth, environmental sustainability and energy security through the inclusion of hydrogen energy technologies in the NECPs. The study will also assess the financial impact of these opportunities and include dissemination activities, to ensure that attractive options for using hydrogen technologies are considered by the Member States.
The project is conducted by Trinomics in collaboration with LBST. The project will run from August 2019 and will finish by January 2020.
FCH 2 JU
This investigation provided the following preliminary results:
- To identify any existing hydrogen efforts and targets in the NECPs.
- To carry out an analysis on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for each EU Member State, related to the deployment of hydrogen technologies.
- To estimate the cost-effective potential of hydrogen, the resulting environmental, infrastructure implications and hydrogen technology deployment in EU28 Member States and to assess energy security, financial impact, employment and added value.
- To disseminate the findings of the study to the relevant audiences in order to ensure that opportunities for using hydrogen technologies are known by the relevant decision makers.