An overview of the Society’s vision for the hydrogen economy and technology, results of a Social Survey

Green hydrogen technologies are set to become one of the most important energy sources in the long term, as it is environmentally neutral and has no emissions. MacGhyver (Microfluidic Wastewater Treatment and Creation of Green Hydrogen Via Electrochemical Reactions) is an EU-funded project that aims to advance sustainable hydrogen production by developing a cutting-edge microfluidic electrolyzer (MFE) that treats wastewater to produce green hydrogen. This technology could play an important role in the environmental and energy sectors in the near future. In addition, the electrochemical compressor will be developed with a modern method of compressing hydrogen, using a proton exchange membrane sandwiched by electrodes with metal-based catalysts to draw low-pressure hydrogen through the membrane into a high-pressure vessel.

Worldwide, hydrogen demand has increased substantially due to the development of national hydrogen strategies, but it poses several economic and social challenges as the production pathway needs be green, economically viable, and socially acceptable. The production of green hydrogen has both environmental and social impacts, and both need to be considered to guide decision making. The main objective of this work is to assess people’s awareness of hydrogen technologies and economy, in this line, a survey has been prepared with questions classified in three different categories and six different languages in order to develop a Social-LCA (S-LCA).

Following the guidelines published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) [1], the S-LCA has been designed to achieve different objectives and to preliminary assess the social aspects of the MacGhyver project and their potential impacts, both positive and negative, along its life cycle. Figure 1 shows a diagram that collects the main stakeholders of the society, starting with the product (in this case, the green hydrogen production) and layering it with different social communities from near to far. The stakeholders and the different subcategories have been carefully chosen with this scheme in mind. The subcategories give sense and link the 3 aspects of the survey with the different stakeholders, these 3 aspects divide the survey into three categories: the first one focused to get information about the respondents like age, country, etc. Another category of questions to know the opinion of society about general issues related to hydrogen and, finally, a set of questions related to more technological aspects of hydrogen technologies.