This meeting takes place during the WP.6 third annual Forum
Background
Over the past five years hydrogen has become the corner stone of decarbonization strategies of most ECE member States, and for a good reason: low-emission hydrogen holds potential to decarbonize a broad spectrum of industrial, transportation, and residential uses. Yet many open questions remain. In response to member States’ demand for answers, in June 2023 UNECE launched a Hydrogen Task Force (HTF) under the Committee on Sustainable Energy and its Group of Experts on Gas. HTF catalyses dialogue on hydrogen, with emphasis on sustainable hydrogen, at all levels of policymaking in the ECE region. HTF concluded that hydrogen could indeed play a key role in building resilient energy systems and reaching carbon neutrality. For this to happen, two critical breakthroughs need to be achieved:
- Agree a classification of hydrogen as a product. This is required to facilitate international in hydrogen.
- Develop a hydrogen value chain that includes various equipment for hydrogen production, transport, storage, conversion, and use. This equipment too must meet certain regulatory requirements.
Hydrogen is an industrial commodity that can be considered as a product placed on markets need to comply with the regulatory requirements in domestic and export markets. Consistent with the requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) administered multilateral trading system, technical regulations should be developed with the aim of addressing health, safety and environmental concerns without posing unnecessary barriers to trade. Businesses need to study, understand and comply with such regulatory requirements by implementing standards referenced in national technical regulations. Harmonizing these requirements across borders based on internationally agreed standards can facilitate this process and contribute to common principles for enforcement of product safety, security and market surveillance. This is supported by the UNECE WP.6 Recommendation L on International Model for Transnational Regulatory Cooperation Based on Good Regulatory Practice.
Concerning hydrogen transport by pipes, HTF explores how to use the current gas infrastructure to transport hydrogen blended with natural gas in various proportions. The conformity requirements for equipment used in relation to pipelines for hydrogen may currently be different from one country to another. WP.6 has recently launched a project to provide guidance on harmonizing the relevant standards and conformity assessment systems for the transport of hydrogen through trunk pipelines.