Public datasets of technologies along the hydrogen value chain for life cycle (sustainability) assessment

Expected Outcome

Sustainability of Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) products is a key requirement in the path towards a hydrogen economy. In this regard, measuring the sustainability of FCH systems from a life cycle perspective has become a crucial need. To that end, guidelines for life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) of FCH systems have already been developed and applied within the scope of the JU-funded project SH2E[1], as well as ecodesign guidelines based on life cycle sustainability within the JU-funded projects eGHOST[2] and GUESS-WHy[3]. Moreover, when considering only the environmental dimension, the first Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) specific to FCH products are being proposed and applied within the JU-funded project HyPEF[4]. This expands the spectrum of methodological initiatives on environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) guidelines for FCH systems under the JU-funded projects SH2E1 and FC-HyGuide[5]. Hence, beyond regular LCA implementation in JU-funded projects, previous LCA and FCH-specific efforts have focused on providing guidance for calculating products’ life cycle impacts with increased reproducibility, relevance, and consistency. However, a successful and widespread adoption of these FCH-specific approaches is mainly conditioned by the limited availability of high-quality datasets (i.e. inventories) across the value chain of hydrogen-related systems. According to the identified gap (lack of robust datasets relevant to FCH systems), this topic addresses the development and application of a number of high-quality, open-access (e.g. CC BY license) and freely accessible datasets, also referred to as Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs), to enhance the data used when performing LCA, LCC (life cycle costing), S-LCA (social life cycle assessment) or LCSA studies of FCH systems.

Accordingly, the main outcome of the topic will consist of a number of datasets developed for, and applied to, FCH product systems. Moreover, project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Enhanced applicability of methodologically robust life cycle approaches specific to FCH products systems through increased public data availability and quality;
• Enhanced reporting of the life cycle profile of FCH products along the hydrogen value chain through application of the public inventories to be built within this topic;
• Strengthening the focus on environmental and more far-reaching sustainability aspects in the framework of the transition to a circular economy;
• Strengthening the European value chain of FCH products by facilitating the application of life cycle thinking in the FCH sector, reinforcing EU leadership position and accelerating mass-market adoption of sustainable FCH products;
• Enabling an extended use of robust life cycle approaches relevant to the identification of FCH products as a sustainable investment.

Project results are expected to contribute to the following objectives of the Clean Hydrogen JU SRIA for cross-cutting issues and the specific area on sustainability:

• Development of life cycle thinking tools addressing the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental) and database for life cycle sustainability indicators. In this regard, this topic should specifically contribute to the inventory component of these tools for application to product systems in the FCH sector. Inventory building will be relevant to at least the environmental dimension, while exploring opportunities for economic and social dimensions. Moreover, application of the datasets for testing purposes should result in an increased availability of life cycle indicators of FCH-relevant products;
• Development of ecodesign guidelines for FCH technologies. In this sense, the datasets to be developed within this topic will facilitate the LCSA studies required in the development of those guidelines. Hence, project results are expected to contribute to the achievement of the specific key performance indicators (KPIs) on the number of ecodesign guidelines for FCH technologies.

Scope

Given the importance of further enabling a robust and transparent assessment of FCH products to support the penetration of those in compliance with sustainability standards, this topic promotes the timely development of high-quality datasets for key FCH-relevant products and technologies across the hydrogen value chain. As regards scope, the project is expected to focus on the development of at least 20 high-quality, open-access and freely accessible datasets (LCIs) for several key FCH-relevant products and technologies. Besides, projects should also illustrate LCIs usefulness through their application in life cycle (sustainability) assessment studies.

The addressed materials, components, equipment, and technologies should be relevant to the hydrogen value chain, involve different technology readiness levels (thus including emerging technologies), and enable the assessment of a complete FCH system. In this regard, at least one entire FCH product system should be fully covered and assessed using both existing LCIs and the new ones to be built. When relevant, the developed inventories should address current data gaps regarding aspects such as critical raw materials, hydrogen losses, recycling, and end-of-life processes. According to current maturity in life cycle databases, inventory building should be relevant to at least the environmental dimension, while exploring opportunities for economic and social dimensions (which are subject to deeper geographical concerns).

The funded project should involve:

• Review of individual foreground datasets developed in previous FCH-relevant projects, particularly those funded by the JU, and scientific literature.
• Building of open-access, high-quality inventories respecting FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles and assessing data quality considering technology (including technology readiness level), time, and region. The involvement of industry actors for the generation of new datasets is expected. Documentation on standardised data structures and modelling principles for the resultant database (i.e. collection of structured datasets), as well as on specific details for each dataset, should be prepared.
• Application of the developed datasets in life cycle (sustainability) assessment studies for testing purposes.

The expected consortium should involve experts in the field of LCA/LCSA of FCH product systems and FCH companies relevant to data acquisition. Letters of support from OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) should be made available at the proposal stage.

The datasets developed by the project for environmental LCA should be ready for their publication in the hydrogen node of the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN)[6], which is managed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Cooperation with the JRC and the European Hydrogen Sustainability and Circularity Panel (EHS&CP) should be foreseen. Moreover, synergy with other initiatives such as the IEA Hydrogen TCP Task 50 on Cost and Carbon Intensity Analysis and Model Comparison of Hydrogen Supply Chains[7] could be considered.

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

[1] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007163

[2] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007166

[3] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101192392

[4] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101137575

[5] https://fc-hyguide.eu/

[6] https://eplca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/LCDN/

[7] https://www.ieahydrogen.org/task/task-50-cost-and-carbon-intensity-analysis-and-model-comparison-of-hydrogen-supply-chains/