Hydrogen value chain deployment - Agenda for the emerging hydrogen economy supporting energy system integration

The rapid emergence of the hydrogen economy requires concerted actions amongst the stakeholders along the hydrogen value chain, shifting from local to regional to international perspective. Large-scale deployment of renewable power needs to be followed by large-scale conversion, transport and storage from source to use. From a western European viewpoint, this involves both local production and remote import through gas pipe infrastructures and through shipping. The end users need to invest in ways of adopting large-scale hydrogen for energy and feedstock sources in a cross-sectoral context of industry, mobility and the built environment. The HyChain-ESI project develops methods and tools for optimization and simulation, policy development and serious games to support coherent technical, economical and institutional design of large-scale hydrogen value chains in time and special domain for expansion of energy infrastructures and systems. It analyses the interrelation between technology, business models and policy to support the emergence of hydrogen-based economy taking into account deep uncertainty. It investigates the roles of the many actors involved in the value chain to understand how individual decision making of the actors can be influenced to result in concerted action towards a common goal. This results in a trans-national high-impact adaptive investment and policy agenda to develop an inclusive, fair, reliable, affordable and sustainable hydrogen economy. Achieving rapid deployment is a critical success factor for reaching the Paris Agreement targets.