Nordic Hydrogen Hubs - Roadmaps towards 2030 and 2040

Hydrogen is essential in reaching ambitious national and international emission targets by 2050. This is supported by hydrogen plans, roadmaps, strategies as well as research- and demonstration programs in the Nordic countries. To scale up and implement hydrogen across sectors in the Nordic countries, significant challenges need to be addressed. These challenges, among others, relate to the cost of production, transport, and storage; infrastructure and standardization; socio-economic barriers, access to competence, market creation and not the least the creation of hydrogen value chains. The main hypothesis in the NordicH2ubs is that a better understanding of such challenges across the Nordic countries and across sectors makes the pathways towards hydrogen value chains clearer, accelerates the Nordic Carbon Neutrality efforts, while lowering the risks for industry and governments. NordicH2ubs will foster the formation of hydrogen valleys in the Nordic countries by bringing together strong and diverse R&D-, industry- and regulatory partners as well as observers across the Nordics, by accelerating the research and innovation needed to address these challenges, thus creating pathways towards Nordic hydrogen valleys in 2030 and 2040.

The research in NordicH2ubs will link different research perspectives and cover multiple industry sectors. Five case studies will be performed by researchers and leading industry actors in close cooperation with governmental entities and funding agencies, where the overall outcome will be improved understanding on how to ensure successful cross-sectorial linkage between Nordic hydrogen hubs across land and sea towards 2030 and 2040. In parallel with the case studies, the project will address key enabling elements towards successful Nordic hydrogen valleys. On the site level, NordicH2ubs will study safety and standardization related to hydrogen storage in ports and quality assurance for hydrogen used in transportation. On a country level, socio-economic barriers related to cross-sectorial collaboration, including competence needs in the Nordics and regulations that hinder Nordic hydrogen uptake will be identified. On the Nordic level, NordicH2ubs will develop a modelling toolbox based on three existing open-source models which will be used to study how Nordic hydrogen value chains interacts with the wider energy system, including long-term strategic investments and short-term operations between all relevant energy carriers.