Green Hydrogen Tracking and Attribution Framework

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