NorWays - Providing decision support for introduction of Hydrogen in the Norwegian energy system

In a long term perspective, hydrogen is perceived as the most promising energy carrier, as a supplement to electricity, enabling utilisation of energy from a wide range of renewable sources. Introduction of hydrogen will, however, bring about radical chan ges, which cannot be achieved without major political incentives. Internationally, hydrogen technology is figuring on top of the R&D agenda. The National Hydrogen Commission's report revealed a high level of consensus with respect to why Norway should pu t effort to hydrogen. The report does not provide recommendations neither to the timeline of the development nor to which geographical regions that could form a natural starting point for a national hydrogen infrastructure development. This project, ent itled NorWays, includes development of a robust methodology for screening of pathways as well as development of regional models for dynamic analysis of selected market segments and geographical regions. Infrastructure analysis will be utilised for more de tailed studies of combined technical-economical constrains to specific geographic regions. This way the NorWays project will put effort into quantifying the early markets for hydrogen in the 2030 timeframe. NorWays will be carried out by a multidisciplin ary project group of researchers from NTNU, IFE and SINTEF, with competence ranging from technical via social-sciences, to economics, in cooperation with two foreign research groups: -University of California, Davis, Institute for Transportation Studies -Ludwig Bölkow SystemTechnik (LBST), Germany National workshops will be actively used to ensure industrial participation. Sensitivity analysis will contribute to estimate uncertainties in obtained results. Transparency will be assured in every step with respect to assumptions and criteria. With the objective of providing decision support for introduction of hydrogen in the Norwegian energy system, NorWays is highly relevant for the RENERGI-program.