Advancing a Green Hydrogen Tracking and Attribution Framework to Enable Green Hydrogen Deployment

  1. Wide-scale deployment of “Green Hydrogen” – hydrogen created through electrolysis using renewable electricity – is critical to greenhouse gas reduction plans.
  2. Tracking of how green hydrogen is created, its movement geographically and in form, and how it is used, is essential to support this deployment credibly and effectively.  Without an effective and credible tracking and attribution system,  creators of green hydrogen have no effective way of creating a ‘premium’ product (relative to hydrogen made using fossil fuels), and users, for compliance and voluntary purposes, cannot verify that their hydrogen is green.
  3. Tracking and attribution is complex, because renewable energy (through hydrogen) will be stored and transported, and converted across media (electric and chemical, and used in transportation, industrial and building applications or back into electricity).
  4. No current system exists to fulfill this need, and efforts to deploy green hydrogen are outpacing the infrastructure needed to track and attribute it.  Further, the nature of the hydrogen ecosystem spans geography, and any system capable of effectively and credibly tracking hydrogen from source to use needs to sit alongside of existing regional electricity tracking and attribution systems

Check out the presentation below to read more about our initial work on this topic, which involves the problem statement (the tracking and attribution challenge); illustrative hydrogen production and use cases; universal Design Requirements and associated design issues for hydrogen tracking & attribution; and a conceptualization of a system capable of fulfilling those requirements

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On May 24, 2023, SEA’s Bob Grace presented in a well-received poster session on the topic at the American Clean Power Association’s national annual Cleanpower conference.

View the presented poster here.

Stakeholders from a wide range of organizations engaged, and universally endorsed the approach presented as logical, compelling, and necessary.  They posed questions to understand use case; probe how different approaches to additionality, real-time matching or differing eligibility might be supported; explore what types of entities might best serve as funders &/or institutional hosts of a Hydrogen Tracking System; and understand how they can get involved.

SEA is pursuing interest in funding the next steps, and participation (stakeholder input) in developing the details.  Next steps in the undertaking include:

  • Finding funder(s) and securing funding
  • Engage stakeholders to reach consensus on the approach and its details
  • Develop functional specifications of a national/international Hydrogen tracking system
  • Identifying & funding an institutional home
  • Implementation

Interested in helping us get there? Please fill out the form below: