HYDROGEN SAFETY AND IMPROVED PERMIT PROCESSES

The project Hydrogen Safety and Improved Permit Processes (H2SIPP) is part of the program Nordic Hydrogen Valleys as Energy Hubs. The overall aim of H2SIPP is to develop a strategy to reduce obstacles to the implementation of hydrogen in the Nordic countries, from a permit, safety and social acceptance perspective. In general, the project focuses on the permitting process, and specifically on establishing safety distances. This is considered one of the major challenges for a broad implementation of hydrogen technologies. NTNU focuses on the regulations aimed at the hydrogen value chain in the Norwegian context through specific case studies. The project identified techniques required to obtain permits for the establishment of hydrogen handling facilities, such as quantitative risk analysis. Furthermore, hydrogen handling facilities were compared with facilities that use conventional hazardous substances, in addition to a preliminary risk analysis of hydrogen filling stations. The work will form the basis for presenting a plan for the Nordics from a safety and permit perspective, with the intention of maintaining and further developing the technological lead for many years to come.

The overall goal with this project is to develop a strategy to delimit barriers for the implementation of hydrogen in the Nordic countries, from a permit, safety and social acceptance perspective – factors identified as key barriers in recent work. The focus is to support streamlining the permitting process in general and specifically for safety distance determination which are considered one of the major challenges for a broad implementation of hydrogen technologies. The work will be performed by researchers within hydrogen implementation, regulations and organisation, in co-operation with hydrogen safety researchers at LTH, material experts in Aalto Uni. The project is strongly supported by actors across the hydrogen value chain, who all witness of the acute need of improving the permit processes, safety analysis and connected barriers as social acceptance. For the analysis of decision-making permit processes, the project will rely on written materials, on stakeholder interviews and network- analyses capturing, how the decision-making system on hydrogen de facto is organized, what institutional challenges involved actors identifies, and what is required to overcome them (in terms of new legislation and organization). Comparing Sweden and Norway, where the experience of gas is much different due to the offshore industry, in this respect will provide valuable lessons for the future. As part of the engineering research, Aalto will add material safety and reliability analysis supported by tailormade plan for non- destructive testing (NDT). The NDT plan will be developed and validated in pipeline prototypes, made of materials and dimensions representative of real conditions.