Standards Development

Scope

The scope of this proposal is to establish a methodology and analytical framework to determine the GHG emissions related to a unit of produced hydrogen up to the consumption gate.

This NP proposes a Technical Specification consisting of the following 3 Parts (see attached Outline for details):

• Part 1: Hydrogen production

• Part 2: Hydrogen conditioning

• Part 3: Hydrogen transportation

NOTE: Once a draft of this comprehensive TS is developed (estimated December 2023), the intent is to use it as a seed document for the development of 3 individual standards – one per each part noted above – belonging to the same family of standards. This will require 3 individual NPs.

Purpose

The Paris Agreement was established at the COP21 in Paris, on December 12, 2015, to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change and keep the global temperature rise in this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase even further, to 1.5°C. For such, Green House Gas (GHG) emissions need to be reduced by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero in 2050 (IPCC, 2022; UNFCCC, 2021).

The GHG reduction is a major challenge for the 21st century. Only in 2019, 35.9 gigatons (Gt) of CO2eq were released by power plants (37%), industries (21%), the transport sector (21%), and buildings (8%), as fossil fuels are essential to the operations of these sectors (CRIPPA et al., 2020; IEA, 2021)

Worldwide investments in hydrogen are expected to exceed USD 300 billion until 2030, which will result in a total production capacity estimated at 150 million tons (Mt) of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen per year. In 2050, it is estimated that renewable and low-carbon hydrogen will be consumed at a scale of 500 Mt contributing to the decarbonization goals.

By 2022, over 35 countries have launched roadmaps to include hydrogen in their energy mix. Furthermore, many countries have announced national hydrogen strategies to decarbonize their economies. 

To achieve the Paris Agreement goals by 2050, it is crucial to immediately act on the decarbonization of existing energy systems. Furthermore, energy-intensive sectors, such as transportation and industrial, must be decarbonized on large scale as well. Renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass), that have high global potential, ought to be widely implemented to meet current and increasing future worldwide energy demand.

However, on a global view, the geographical distribution of renewable sources does not necessarily match its local energy needs. Moreover, the energy generated by these sources depends on meteorological and climate factors, which poses additional challenges when trying to meet the hourly energy supply and demand. 

Hydrogen can be produced from diverse sources including renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels. It can be used to decarbonize numerous sectors including transportation, industrial manufacturing, and power generation, while possessing an expressive energy content, being a versatile energy carrier and a fuel, since occurrences of natural hydrogen have been proved on earth. Renewable hydrogen is one of the main alternatives to address issues related to renewable electricity daily fluctuations and geographical dispersion. It results from the conversion of renewable sources and is a versatile energy carrier that has an expressive energy content. It is one of the central pillars to reach net zero, as it can be used in different sectors (DNV, 2021). To produce low-carbon hydrogen using fossil fuels, it is necessary to use carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) methods to reduce the emissions associated with its production. 

At the Hydrogen Energy Ministerial (HEM) meeting in 2019, Ministers encouraged actions in line with the four pillars in the Tokyo Statement, while taking into account different national circumstances. The versatility and storage capacity of hydrogen creates potential for domestic production and consumption of hydrogen and also to establish it as a tradeable energy commodity between countries.

Leading organizations including the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) / Mission Innovation (MI) are taking actions on four main issues individually and collaboratively to scale up and accelerate the deployment of hydrogen technologies. This includes collaboration on technologies and harmonization of regulation, codes and standards, and the collection, analysis and sharing of data to evaluate the potential of hydrogen and its effect on CO2 and other emissions reduction, both upstream and downstream across a variety of hydrogen production pathways.

To enable a robust and sustainable market for hydrogen technologies, it is necessary to develop clean, affordable, secure, and reliable supply chains to support the development of effective hydrogen trading markets. To this end, countries will need to put in place standards and protocols that are transparent and facilitate efficient international trade in hydrogen. This will require international standards developed by the relevant international standards development bodies, which in turn will facilitate the removal and/or reduction of regulatory barriers, will help develop new, innovative technologies and will form a common definition of clean/sustainable hydrogen. A particular challenge is that identical hydrogen molecules can be produced and combined from sources with very different GHG intensities. Likewise, hydrogen-based fuels and products will be indistinguishable and might result from hydrogen being combined with a range of fossil and low-carbon inputs. Indeed, some of the products made from hydrogen (e.g., electricity) could themselves be used in the production of hydrogen. Accounting standards for different sources of hydrogen along the supply chain will be fundamental to creating a market for renewable hydrogen and for low-carbon hydrogen, and these standards need to be agreed internationally. 

To this end, it is proposed to establish a methodology and analytical framework to determine the GHG emissions related to a unit of produced hydrogen up to the consumption gate. It may serve as a basis of a certification scheme. However, it will not provide guidance on any GHG emissions intensity threshold values be proposed. This will remain the responsibility of each country even if common terminologies and thresholds will facilitate the international trade of hydrogen.