The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance has published its “Roadmap on hydrogen standardisation”, setting European standards in this area supports EU ambitions for a climate-neutral carbon economy and the uptake of hydrogen in the European market.

The roadmap provides a comprehensive overview of standardization gaps, challenges and needs identified by Alliance members. These gaps continue to be a significant barrier to the deployment of hydrogen technologies, applications, and investments. The roadmap covers standardization needs for the entire hydrogen value chain, from production, distribution, transport, and storage to end applications.

In line with the standardization strategy, the roadmap also includes a set of recommendations aimed at streamlining and accelerating the process of defining European standards. It will feed into the work of the Commission and national and European standardization bodies. In particular, it will allow the Commission to prepare a standardization mandate on the identified hydrogen standards for European standardization organizations.

The roadmap also reflects the priorities identified in the annual work program for standardization for 2023 and also follows up on the 2021 report of the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, in which the absence of standards relating to hydrogen constitutes a significant obstacle to the deployment of new solutions for hydrogen.

Finally, the roadmap issued a set of key actions which should pave the way for new hydrogen standards to accelerate the roll out of large-scale hydrogen solutions.

Key actions:

1. Integration of the identified standardisation topics list into the standard-setting process at EU level (CEN-CENELEC) and international level (ISO-IEC).
2. Prioritise, as a first step approach, topics that are not yet directly addressed in specific standardisation committees; topics that need further technical understanding to allow for identification of standardisation needs; topics that are horizontal and therefore relevant for different segments of the hydrogen value chain.
3. Get broader stakeholder engagement in the standardisation process by sending experts to the relevant standardisation committees.
4. Call on the European Commission to support the hydrogen standardisation process by issuing standardisation request(s).
5. Continuous support of the standardisation process by the WG on Standardisation.
6. Strengthen the coordination of the overall process, including with relevant Horizon Europe Partnerships.