Brief Background

A 'sustainable hydrogen economy' is only a few decades ahead
Although huge oil reserves still exist and gas reserves seem ever increasing, many expect that the end of the cheap fossil energy era will be reached within a few decades. This calls for new energy scenarios, in which the world eventually becomes independent of fossil fuels. Growing concerns regarding economic dependence, political stability and greenhouse gas emissions will only speed up this development.
Future energy scenarios will mainly be based on renewable energy sources (wind, solar, water, biomass, etc.). This means that one will be less able to control the precise moments and locations where energy production takes place. Therefore efficient, sustainable ways to store and transport energy become very important. One strongly believes that in this development hydrogen will play an important part as energy carrier.

Strong need for multidisciplinary research
Before a 'hydrogen future' can become reality, however, many knowledge gaps must be bridged. Still there exist many technical problems, which are connected to the production of hydrogen (from fossile and sustainable sources), the clean separation of hydrogen from production gas mixtures, the storage of hydrogen and its transport.
In combination with those problems many others appear, which fall in different categories: how to manage energy systems that (partially) operate by means of hydrogen, and how to approach the public risk perception of a hydrogen based economy? Is inventing good sensors sufficient? And, of course, many other questions. In brief, the problems involved cover seven main topics:

• Hydrogen storage; the materials science of hydrogen
• Hydrogen storage and its implications for energy systems (and their management)
• The integration of hydrogen into energy supply (for the transition period and after)
• The social acceptance of hydrogen as a part of the energy infrastructure
• Hydrogen production in a broad sense (i.e. from fossile and renewable sources)
• Separation technologies for clean hydrogen
• Hydrogen activated energy saving devices and sensors 

18 M€ for 'Sustainable Hydrogen' fundamental-strategic research

The abovementioned vision and questions provided the motivation for the launch of the ACTS Sustainable Hydrogen Programme: a 18 M€ Research Programme financially supported by the Dutch Ministries of Economic Affairs and of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, by different departments of the Dutch Research Council (NWO, CW, FOM and WOTRO) and by a number of Dutch (ECN, Gasunie, NUON, Shell, BTG) companies, active in the field. The Programme is open to all Dutch universities under the standard ACTS rules.