The “APE – Energy Notes” continues with a new appointment. This month Gianluigi Migliavacca, Claudio Carlini, Piergiovanni Domenighini, Claudio Zagano, Department of Energy Systems Development of RSE, analyze the future prospects of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is currently the subject of an important debate, within the European Union and elsewhere. The European Commission considers hydrogen as an important ingredient of the European decarbonization policy. The increasing penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) of generation characterized by intermittent behavior makes it increasingly important to have energy storage devices located at strategic points of the electricity grid, where they could be useful to capture the overproduction of RES, so that it is not wasted but can be released later during periods of low RES production. Hydrogen, due to its characteristics, could even be used for seasonal storage, in order to cope with the differences between summer and winter in RES generation. Hydrogen could also contribute to the decarbonization of the so-called hard-to-abate sectors, i.e. those sectors that are difficult to electrify.

In this APE we will focus on defining on the one hand what advantages hydrogen could provide to the energy system in support of current decarbonization policies and on the other hand what problems still exist for its use on a large scale that mean that some questions still remain open and, at times, the subject of scientific and technological research. We will first consider hydrogen production technologies (the “supply” side), then the use of hydrogen by industry and transport, and finally the potential and problems related to interfacing with the electricity grid, including the future need to create a liquid market for the hydrogen commodity.