Work Package 1: Life Cycle and Socio-Economic Assessment

Leader: University of Loughborough

Partners

COGEN Europe, Brussels, Belgium; ECN - the Energy Research Centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands; ISQ - Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade, Porto-Salvo, Portugal; PLANET – Planungsgruppe Energie und Technik GbR, Oldenburg, Germany; SAVIKO Consultants ApS, Roskilde, Denmark; Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.

Aims and Objectives

The principal aims of Work Package 1 (WP1) are to evaluate and present the relative environmental, social and economic costs and benefits of transporting hydrogen through existing natural gas networks. The main objectives consist of conducting life cycle assessment of the major natural resource inputs and environmental outputs, and socio-economic assessments of employment and economic costs for current natural gas and related energy systems, transitional natural gas/hydrogen systems and future complete hydrogen systems. In particular, such life cycle assessment concentrates on primary energy inputs relevant to energy resource depletion, carbon dioxide and other prominent greenhouse gas emissions associated with global climate change, major emissions which affect air quality, and ionising radiation.

Socio-economic assessments address direct and indirect job creation and maintenance, and internal economic costs. A modular approach ensures that all components of the systems under investigation can be evaluated in a coherent, effective and transparent manner. Comparison of the relative costs and benefits considers current natural gas and related energy systems (baseline scenario), the transitional natural gas/hydrogen system (intermediate scenario) and the future complete hydrogen system (final scenario).
 

Current Status

The activities of WP1 are divided into 8 Tasks and their current status can be summarised as follows:

• Task 1.1 (Literature Review) examined existing work on relevant life cycle and socio-economic assessment and this has been reported in Deliverable D2 (Literature Review Report), which is updated using an electronic database.

• Task 1.2 (Standard Results Format) developed a spreadsheet template for conducting life cycle and socio-economic assessment and this has been provided as Deliverable D5 (Standard Spreadsheet) which is supported by a users’ guide.

• Tasks 1.3 (Baseline Scenario), 1.4 (Intermediate Scenario), and 1.5 (Final Scenario) are all underway; this involves preparing spreadsheets for all the technologies associated with current natural gas and related energy systems, the transitional natural gas/hydrogen system and a future complete hydrogen system. This work is expected to be completed in 2007 and the results of these Tasks will be reported in Deliverables D7 (Baseline Scenario Report), D29 (Intermediate Scenario Report) and D30 (Final Scenario Report).

• Task 1.6 will bring the results together (Comparison of Results) which will produce Deliverable D41 (Comparison Report) in 2008.

• Task 1.7 (Interpretation of Results) is underway and this will provide Deliverable D42 (Interpretation Report) in 2008.

• Task 1.8 (Co-ordination) is ongoing and will conclude in 2009.