Report Highlights

• We have an opportunity to get hydrogen right – before new systems are built at scale globally. Now is the time to establish the practices needed to maximize hydrogen’s benefits for the climate, ecosystems, and human society, while minimizing its risks.
• Hydrogen should be used where it can cost-effectively reduce the most climate warming at the lowest possible risk. On a macro level, deployment of hydrogen as an energy carrier should be evaluated against non-hydrogen alternatives (e.g. electrification, efficiency, etc.) to guide limited resources to applications where hydrogen provides the greatest benefits.
• Hydrogen systems must be evaluated based on a full system-level assessment. Assessments should consider all climate-warming gases (i.e. methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen itself); climate-relevant timescales; and evolving scientific understanding and engineering considerations. Assessment should also include hydrogen’s potential risks and benefits, including air quality and ecosystem impacts, and economic and social factors on the local level and/or globally.
• Hydrogen systems should be designed to minimize emissions. Emissions and leakage of all climate-warming gases throughout the hydrogen value chain must be minimized to avoid the risk of compromising the intended climate benefits. Emissions performance needs to be monitored, reported, and verified.