4CF The Futures Literacy Company is a consultancy entirely focused on strategic foresight and long-term strategies. For nearly two decades, 4CF has been on the mission to help its clients prepare for an uncertain tomorrow. The Company has executed hundreds of projects for private companies, public institutions and international entities, including the European Commission and its agencies (EUDA, ENISA), FAO, UNFCCC, UNESCO, UNEP and UNDP. 4CF is at the forefront of global innovation, and actively contributes to the development of cutting-edge foresight tools, including 4CF HalnyX (Delphi platform), 4CF Sprawlr, 4CF FLEx.

Green Hydrogen offers a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, changing the world of energy supply completely – geopolitically (some countries depend on their own Renewable Energy sources for their energy supply and not on other countries) and in terms of market structure (no more dependence on a small number of all-powerful oil, carbon and gas companies). Despite today’s inefficiencies in converting energy from nature to Hydrogen and back to power, Hydrogen could be a versatile energy carrier and a central element for energy storage in more abundant but more volatile renewable energy systems. Hydrogen needs to be produced, stored, and transported. Scientific and political discourses range from “hydrogen technology will provide us with the abundance of energy” to “building up hydrogen infrastructure including the necessary renewable energy sources is inefficient and will not lead to any kind of abundance.” For sure is that a fundamental change toward hydrogen as an energy carrier will have deep consequences for consumption and production patterns, global trade, and the reconfiguration of infrastructures.

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Climate change and the limitations – physically and politically/economically - of fossil fuels foster the need to decarbonise and change to alternative energy production, storage, and carrier systems. Technology in renewable energy improves, and in general, energy efficiency is increasing, but currently, absolute demand for power is increasing.

The technology to form Hydrogen is improving, and more units are built. Also, catalyst technology is advancing. One must expect strong opposition from current stakeholders in fossil and nuclear technology. Although, there is also the option to use nuclear power to form Hydrogen, which many people see as critical. Investments in the infrastructure are high. While mixing Hydrogen with methane for heating is almost feasible today with minor adaptations to the gas pipelines, building up an entire parallel infrastructure for handling pure Hydrogen safely is a massive adaptation in infrastructure. It remains unclear how a transition can be managed and financed and if access to critical raw materials is given. Before hydrogen technology could enter the market in full force, the low efficiency in converting power to Hydrogen power needs to be improved or compensated.

Renewable energy production and catalyst technologies require rare earth metals, precious metals, and large amounts of copper, aluminium, and even sand for construction. Most of these raw materials cannot be found within the EU. How to secure access to these raw materials when there is a race for these resources? In addition, the EU has only limited potential for renewable energy production. Harvesting consequently, e.g., solar energy potentials, would transform the infrastructure significantly. One challenge might be that there could be a mismatch between the availability of solar or wind energy and water. Conflict regarding the use of water is likely in these areas. The electrolysis of water in massive quantities will also put pressure on the water system, which climate change impacts can worsen. In general, water might be scarce when there is more abundance of renewable resources.Any burning (also Hydrogen) under ambient air will lead to the formation of nitrogen oxide, which is a significant cause of air pollution (PM, acidification and eutrophication, precursor for ozone).

After its hydrogen strategy in 2020, the EU has recognize d hydrogen as a key technology for achieving policy goals such as the European Green Deal. Its strategy is heavily focused on emissions-free green hydrogen, with a target to install 40 gigawatts of renewable hydrogen electrolyser capacity by 2030. How Europe is positioned against other global players in the race on hydrogen?

In 2019, around 120 million tonnes of hydrogen were produced globally, two-thirds of which is pure hydrogen and one-third of which is a mixture with other gases. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of hydrogen, followed by the US and India (Figure 1). 

Hydrogen is „just“ an elementary molecule consisting of two hydrogen-atoms. Why is there so much fuss about this simple molecule that even a whole economy should or could be built upon it? The reaction of hydrogen (H2) with oxygen releases a lot of energy while forming pure water. In the other direction, water can be divided into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen with the help of electricity (there are of cause also other hydrogen building reactions mostly built on fossil fuels/biomass); this is simple chemistry. Compared to fossil fuels, water is nearly unlimited on the planet.

In this blog post - Hydrogen Economy in "Europe 2040", I raised the first set of questions relevant to our scenario process. Meanwhile, we had a series of interviews with our experts, drafted a list of influencing factors and defined the scope of the scenarios.

Since hydrogen energy, in particular green hydrogen, is increasingly regarded as an important energy carrier in the EU's transition strategies towards a carbon-neutral future, questions concerning both the shape and size of a hydrogen economy need to be asked now. Green hydrogen, it is assumed, can play a significant role in the de-carbonization of high-energy-intensive industries and (some means of) transport as it can both deliver and store a tremendous amount of energy. For hydrogen energy to be sustainable - in other words, for it to be "green" - it must be produced from renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar. However, since at least in some EU countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, the potential of renewable energy production is limited in the sense that it won't be able to meet projected green hydrogen demands, policymakers are increasingly looking to establish international partnerships to produce green hydrogen outside the EU and import it for national use - with a particular focus on countries in the Global South. 

What could a European energy system that includes hydrogen look like in 2040 in the context of different global, political, economic and social constellations in and around the continent?

The transition to renewable energy in Europe has evolved dynamically since the turn of the century. The share of renewable energy in the European Union more than doubled between 2004 and 2022. Nevertheless, renewable energy represents only 22 percent of overall energy consumption and 37 percent of electricity generation in the EU. In other words, Europe still has a long way to go, even when it comes to the relatively easy task of converting its electricity production to renewables.

To be of relevance to energy, green hydrogen and related technologies need to be scaled up hugely. To reach such a mass market, a low-cost clean-hydrogen supply must be available. However, to lower the price of hydrogen, much larger H2-markets and volumes are needed. The scale and the cost (of green hydrogen) go hand in hand. But they also form a classical Chicken and Egg problem, which many now successful clean energy technologies have likewise faced in the past and managed to overcome.

The answer is probably, a classic: "it depends". Hydrogen is the smallest and lightest molecule in the world. It is about eight times lighter than methane. There's a lot of methane leakage around the world. And by "a lot", I really mean a lot. Satellite imagery by the European Space Agency collected data that proves there is significantly more leakage in the atmosphere than official estimates. And methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere (Source: Environmental Defense Fund - EDF). Some of this methane leakage is due to sheer industry negligence (oil and gas companies have been proven to do routine gas flaring), but also to bad casings, old pipes, and all sorts of infrastructure mishaps that are bound to happen in any industry. Now imagine how much easier is for hydrogen - a much lighter molecule than methane - to escape and leak, particularly when we blend it with natural gas in existing pipelines, as is the case in the plans of many countries in Europe - including Romania, my home country.  

This foresight study aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027), by providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making that could contribute novel elements to the processes of strategic planning.

The study, which was launched in mid-2021 and lasted almost two years, has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community hosted by futures4europe.eu, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe.

The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:

• As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
• An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on futures4europe.eu.
• An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
• On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the five areas of interest resulted in deep dives on the following topics:
  > Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
  > Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
  > The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
  > Global Commons
  > Transhumanist Revolutions
  
• Further areas of interest identified were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments:
  > Social Confrontations
  > Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
  > The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
  > The Future of Health
  
• A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
• Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collected suggestions from almost 950 contributors from Europe and beyond about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

The detailed description of the foresight work and the resulting outputs are available in the final report of the project.

This foresight study has been implemented through the Foresight on Demand framework contract, by a team of 40 experts. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and their policy implications.