Guidelines for sustainable-by-design systems across the hydrogen value chain

This topic addresses the development of sustainable-by-design guidelines, including reference criteria and prioritisation of actions, for a selection of FCH systems in the joint field of safe and sustainability assessment and eco-design. These guidelines should comprehensively address both the sustainability and safety aspects of systems pertaining to the primary applications of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

The project should encompass the following items:

• Development of at least three safe and sustainable-by-design guidelines for systems across the hydrogen value chain providing criteria for the system selected. It is expected that the systems will be selected covering different TRLs levels and different application from hydrogen production, storage, transport, distribution and utilisation;
• Integrate the sustainability guidelines developed by eGHOST project with safety aspects so to obtain SSbD guidelines of at least five FCH systems (2 from eGHOST project + at least 3 from this call);
• Providing guidance, in the guidelines, concerning the following concepts: improvement of energetic and environmental performances, reduction of critical raw materials utilisation, avoiding or minimising the use of virgin critical raw materials, green supply management, and integration of end-of-life management in order to facilitate recovery, reuse, recycle, disassembly and dismantling, following a circular economy approach;
• Integration of safety, economic and social assessments and improvements for FCH systems to achieve comprehensive SSbD guidelines. These aspects need to be integrated with the existing eco-design approaches, which primarily focus on environmental impacts, in order to create a holistic approach to sustainability and safety;
• Incorporation of various methods (e.g. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, circularity assessment, material criticality assessment, optimisation techniques) in the development of the guidelines and their application to the selected systems. The guidelines should encompass the following steps at a minimum: defining and evaluating a reference system, generating eco-design ideas, multi-criteria prioritisation of SSbD, defining safe and sustainable-by-design system concepts and evaluating their impact on the different stakeholders of the hydrogen value chain (e.g. industry, research organisations, academia, policy makers). Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) methods should be used to engage Stakeholders using structured surveys or interviews.

The project should provide the datasets (life cycle inventories) of the FCH systems analysed into the upcoming “hydrogen node” of the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN).

Proposals are expected to involve experts in hydrogen technologies, safety and eco-design (e.g. research centres, universities) as well as industries and technology developers.

For additional elements applicable to all topics please refer to section 2.2.3.2.

The JU estimates that an EU contribution of maximum EUR 1.50 million would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately.

The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 2.2.3.2 of the Clean Hydrogen JU 2024 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023–2024 which apply mutatis mutandis.