Hydrogen Council

As of April 2022, the Hydrogen Council consists of 132[lower-alpha 1] members separated into three groups: the Steering Group, the Supporting Group and the Investor Group.[1][6]

The Hydrogen Council is steered by a core group of executives who meet annually at a CEO level event.

Ongoing governance is led by two Co-Chairs from different geographies and sectors, elected every two years by the council's Steering Members. Each year one of the two co-chair mandates are renewed for continuity. The organisation is steered by two co-secretaries (representatives of the two Co-Chairs).[1]

To date the co-chair and Co-Secretary positions have been held by Air Liquide and Toyota (2017), Air Liquide, Hyundai (2018) and, Air Liquide and Hyundai (2019).[8]

As of November 2019, The Hydrogen Council lists its partners as The Center for Hydrogen Safety (CHS), The Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), Energy Observer, H
₂ View, IEA Hydrogen, Mission Innovation (MI) and The World Economic Forum.[9]

Published in January 2017," How Hydrogen Empowers the Energy Transition"[11] explores the seven roles of hydrogen in decarbonising major sectors of the economy and considers the policy environment needed to facilitate deployment of hydrogen technology.

Published in November 2017, "Hydrogen, scaling up"[12] outlines a comprehensive and qualified roadmap for wide-scale deployment of hydrogen for decarbonisation of transport, industry and buildings, and enabling a renewable energy production and distribution system.

The scenarios outlined in the report suggest that hydrogen technologies could contribute to meeting 18% of the world's final energy demands, avoiding 6 Gt of CO₂ emissions, and creating a market with revenues of $2.5 trillion each year while providing 30 million jobs by mid-century. An investment of $280 billion – or annual investments of $20–25 billion until 2030 – would be required to build the hydrogen economy with these benefits.

Following publication of this report, the EU,[13] France,[14] and South Korea[15] published similar analyses, focusing on their specific regions.

Published in September 2018, "Hydrogen Meets Digital"[16] investigates the impact of digitisation on energy demand, to establish a dialogue with the ICT sector on how digitisation and hydrogen could complement each other during the energy transition. The report concludes that hydrogen has strong benefits that could enable major digital trends and thus serve as an efficient, zero-emission energy vector.

Published in January 2020, "Path to Hydrogen Competitiveness: A Cost Perspective"[17] provides an evidence base on the path to cost competitiveness for 40 hydrogen technologies used in 35 applications. The report suggests that scale-up will be the biggest driver of cost reduction, with cost projected to decrease by up to 50% by 2030 for a wide range of applications.

The Hydrogen Council holds an annual CEO Event, where CEOs and C-suite representatives of member organisations meet to reflect on work of the previous year and to brainstorm strategies to accelerate the council's mission going forward. To date, five CEO Events have taken place. The first was held at the World Economic Forum in Davos (2017),[18] the second at the COP 23 in Bonn, Germany (2017),[19] the third in San Francisco, USA (2018).,[20] the fourth in Versailles in January 2020 and the last one in a digital format in January 2021.

The Hydrogen Council also hosts a number of side-events that gather CEOs and executives from member organisations, alongside key stakeholders and influencers in the energy conversation. Example of such events include: New York: Investor Day, Celebrating Hydrogen in the Clean Energy Economy,[21] China: Hydrogen Industry Development Innovation Forum,[22] and Korea: International Hydrogen Energy Forum.,[23] Japan : Karuizawa Investor Event in coordination with the G20 Energy Forum in June 2019.