Relationship between information, stakeholder involvement and public acceptance in the development of the hydrogen economy

Hydrogen is seen by many scientists and policymakers as one of the promising energy carriers that can help reduce climate-changing emissions and give a decisive boost to the energy transition. Despite these positive trends [1,2], the hydrogen transition faces a number of barriers of various kinds that prevent it from being fully realised [3]. Barriers that need to be addressed to enable the large-scale deployment and use of hydrogen. Among these barriers, there are also those that correlated to the social aspects. But while cost and environmental issues (i.e. carbon footprint indicators) are commonly included in evaluations of hydrogen technologies and devices, social aspects are rarely considered. However, there is a growing interest and focus on these issues as the technology advancesprogresses and they move closer to wider scale and adoption. For example, in their literature review, Almaraz et al. [4] starting from the question “What are the main social aspects related to the hydrogen economy?” identifyied 10 social aspects as follows: Accessibility, Information, H2 markets, Acceptability, Policies & regulation, Socio-political factors, Stakeholders, Externalities, Socio-economic factors, Research & development (R&D). Gordon et al. [5], on the other hand, highlighted how the future prospects of hydrogen, and in particular the transition to domestic hydrogen, face multiple cross-sector barriers to achieving economies of scale and social acceptance. This requires a deep understanding of the socio-technical factors at different scales of the hydrogen economy. It is therefore necessary that future strategies take into account the interactions between the political, techno-economic, technical, market and social dimensions of the hydrogen transition. Parente et al. [6] pointed out that very few studies problematise perceptions and focus on hydrogen production., so their studyThen, using a mixed methods approach based on semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey, in their study [6] they aimed to understand stakeholders' perceptions of hydrogen production sources through a social construction of technology lens. Their research revealed the exclusion of civil society from the decision-making process, which justifies the critical stance of the NGO groups towards hydrogen. The authors see this as an obstacle to achieving energy democracy based on information dissemination and participation. In this context, Tthe purpose of this paperour contribution is to present the first results of a desk study investigating the relationship between three societal aspects: information, stakeholder involvement and acceptance of the use of hydrogen and its technologies.