Environmental Assessment of Green Hydrogen

PhD position

Radboud University offers a PhD position. This is part of the Hy-SUCCES (Social, User aCCeptable, Economically Sustainable Systems for hydrogen) project within the NWO Groenvermogen NL programme. The project involves a broad consortium of universities, research institutes and industrial partners. It aims to analyse the socioeconomic and environmental factors that influence the role of hydrogen in a sustainable energy system, and to remove barriers and put enabling factors in place to deploy hydrogen at the desired scale.

The researcher will contribute to these aims by looking at the environmental impacts of green hydrogen production and use, both in the Netherlands and globally. You will use prospective life-cycle assessment to determine climate footprints, accounting for all emissions of the production, transport, and various end-uses. The prospective element allows assessment of technologies that are still in development (e.g. electrolysers, transport modes). You will consider different hydrogen end-uses and look at climate-optimal ways of using hydrogen. Furthermore, using scenarios, model-outcomes and learning curves of consortium partners you will evaluate the climate benefits and wider environmental impacts of green hydrogen when scaled up by 2030 and 2050.