Public datasets of technologies along the hydrogen value chain for life cycle (sustainability) assessment

Expected Outcome:Sustainability of Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) products is a key requirement in the path towards a hydrogen economy. In this regard, measuring the sustainability of FCH systems from a life cycle perspective has become a crucial need. To that end, guidelines for life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) of FCH systems have already been developed and applied within the scope of the JU-funded project SH2E[1], as well as ecodesign guidelines based on life cycle sustainability within the JU-funded projects eGHOST[2] and GUESS-WHy[3]. Moreover, when considering only the environmental dimension, the first Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) specific to FCH products are being proposed and applied within the JU-funded project HyPEF[4]. This expands the spectrum of methodological initiatives on environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) guidelines for FCH systems under the JU-funded projects SH2E1 and FC-HyGuide[5]. Hence, beyond regular LCA implementation in JU-funded projects, previous LCA and FCH-specific efforts have focused on providing guidance for calculating products’ life cycle impacts with increased reproducibility, relevance, and consistency. However, a successful and widespread adoption of these FCH-specific approaches is mainly conditioned by the limited availability of high-quality datasets (i.e. inventories) across the value chain of hydrogen-related systems. According to the identified gap (lack of robust datasets relevant to FCH systems), this topic addresses the development and application of a number of high-quality, open-access (e.g. CC BY license) and freely accessible datasets, also referred to as Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs), to enhance the data used when performing LCA, LCC (life cycle costing), S-LCA (social life cycle assessment) or LCSA studies of FCH systems.Accordingly, the main outcome of the topic will consist of a number of datasets developed for, and applied to, FCH product systems. Moreover, project res