A Quality Infrastructure Roadmap for green hydrogen

Interest in green hydrogen is increasing among the international community, in light of its potential role in decarbonising end-use sectors to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. According to IRENA’s 1.5^°C scenario, green and blue hydrogen production would need to increase to 125 million tonnes per year (Mtpa) by 2030 and 523 Mtpa by 2050. This brings both development opportunities, and challenges in scaling and adapting production, infrastructure and end-use value chains.

Amid the global focus on green hydrogen projects and associated infrastructure, an often-overlooked requirement is the availability of a robust and resilient quality infrastructure (QI) ecosystem for this sector. QI – defined as a system consisting of organisations, policies, legal framework, and practices required to assure quality, safety and sustainability of products and services – for green hydrogen is a key pillar for enabling the transition.

QI plays an essential role in supporting green hydrogen development, alongside the provision of the necessary technical foundations. It aids in mitigating safety, financial and reputational risks, and facilitates the realisation of positive sustainability outcomes from investments. QI is often not sufficiently factored into hydrogen strategies, largely due to a lack of knowledge of quality infrastructure as well as its associated benefits for hydrogen stakeholders.

To address this observation, as part of the IRENA project entitled “Quality infrastructure for green hydrogen: technical standards and quality control for the production and trade of renewable hydrogen”, implemented with the National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB) and supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), this publication aims to explore the importance of crucial QI services as a key instrument for the successful global production and use of green hydrogen.

An associated presentation, featuring a Tunisia case study demonstrating the application of the proposed roadmap steps, as well as a database, providing a non-exhaustive overview on available and upcoming standards/QI services for green hydrogen, are complements to this publication and available on this webpage.