The European and national strategies for energy transition seek to promote the development of renewable (‘green’) hydrogen as an alternative to fossil (gaseous) energy carriers. The idea is that applications with green hydrogen could eventually be important for industry, mobility, and the built environment. In addition, hydrogen can offer a solution to the capacity problems of the electricity grid. 

However, further developing and applying green hydrogen in the Netherlands and elsewhere raises complex systemic questions. A wider application requires technological development and regulatory innovation but involves high costs and may raise questions of climate justice (where do we get the energy for green hydrogen from, who benefits and who ‘pays the price’?). Moreover, societal acceptance will determine the feasibility and desirability of specific hydrogen projects. Therefore, acceptability is a central factor in a complex interplay of factors that matter in a transition to a hydrogen system. 

In this project, SEVEN investigates which factors influence (lack of) societal support for hydrogen transport, storage and use. We aim to provide insight into choices regarding the role of hydrogen in the energy system and the public acceptability of costs and other consequences. An important question is whether full use should be made of green hydrogen, as its production costs are currently high, or whether acceptable alternatives should be sought. We examine how perceptions of risks and economic benefits influence citizens' attitudes towards hydrogen, the fairness of shaping global and/or local value chains, and the impact of large-scale hydrogen use on resource use.

As social acceptance may also depend on the scale of production and deployment, modelling is used to examine how variations in the design of a future hydrogen system (more globally centralised and/or more locally decentralised) may affect barriers to green hydrogen development and deployment. Finally, we examine how these factors in different countries may influence policy-making, technological innovation, and economic and political developments.

By bringing together many disciplines, including chemistry, psychology, economics, law, political science and history, this SEVEN project provides valuable knowledge for the (im)possibilities to accelerate the energy transition with green hydrogen. It offers insight into attitudes and (un)willingness to accept hydrogen as an energy carrier; into modelling a potential “hydrogen economy”; into the necessary innovation of regulation and governance, and into whether green hydrogen technology can be designed in a fair way from a global perspective, whether or not via highly (de)centralised production sites with the associated transport and storage options.