The energy sector is changing very fast, and the use of hydrogen has a key role to play in moving towards a more sustainable energy system. Expanding the role of renewable gases such as hydrogen helps to decrease greenhouse gas emissions as they will gradually replace carbon-based power generation as well as other hard-to-abate sectors.
There are two ways in which hydrogen can be used in the existing gas grid: blending it with natural gas or conversion to 100% hydrogen grid. Yet, its injection into the gas grid is challenging as not all pipelines across Europe are equally compatible. There is thus a need to further understand and learn how hydrogen could be safely and efficiently included in the current gas grids without harming the assets and equipment, not mentioning gas quality compliance. With the intention of closing these knowledge gaps, the THyGA project was released – consult the project in the link below.
Related also to this, GERG is working alongside CEN on a project aiming to remove these technical barriers by the study of the pre-normative research requirements (PNR) that will contribute to the development of European standards that are necessary for the implementation of hydrogen across Europe – See link to the project below.
In recent years, this interest has also been shared by multiple stakeholders and its use is growing exponentially as the number of projects expands considerably around the world. In GERG we count with a large number of experts that gather together in several workshops to share knowledge, identify research gaps and exchange insights in our Hydrogen working group.
With the purpose of accelerating the use of hydrogen and facilitating its scale-up, we developed the GERG research roadmap that gathers all this information together. It will be useful as an instrument that will help to take forward the research community.
Check these links for more information about the projects related to hydrogen in which GERG is working on: