On Wednesday 1 March, CEN and CENELEC’s Director General, Elena Santiago Cid, received from the hands of Maive Rute, the European Commission’s Chief Standardization Officer, the new Roadmap on hydrogen standardization. CEN and CENELEC welcome the publication of this important document and are committed to collaborating to the roll out of large-scale hydrogen solutions across the EU. 

The Roadmap represents a flagship moment in the EU’s efforts to facilitate the transition to more sustainable energy and transport systems. It provides a comprehensive overview of standardization gaps, challenges and needs across the whole hydrogen chain, together with the steps already taken by the industry. It also includes a set of recommendations to streamline and accelerate the standards developing process, in line with the European Standardization Strategy of 2 February 2022. 

The Roadmap has been developed by the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, set up by the Commission to bring together industry and other stakeholders to support the large-scale deployment of clean hydrogen technologies by 2030. 

In the words of Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Single Market, the objective of the plan is to “provide businesses with a stable regulatory and standardization framework, so as to ensure Europe’s technological sovereignty in this area and contribute to its decarbonisation. It also creates the conditions to allow EU standards to become global benchmarks for hydrogen technologies”.

CEN and CENELEC, as two of the officially recognised European Standardization Organizations (ESOs), have long been committed to developing standards for hydrogen technologies across the board. Activities in the area have been undertaken by a variety of Technical Committees: some examples include CEN-CLC/JTC 6 ‘Hydrogen in energy Systems’, CEN/TC 268 ‘Cryogenic vessels and specific hydrogen technologies applications’ and CEN/TC 234 ‘Gas infrastructure’. Furthermore, the CEN and CENELEC Sector Forum Energy Management Working Group ‘Hydrogen’, provides horizontal support to the different CEN and CENELEC Technical Committees working with hydrogen.

Based on this experience and on the wider commitment to a more sustainable energy system in the context of the Green Deal Industrial Plan, CEN and CENELEC are ready to participate to the development of the European hydrogen sector, together with all relevant experts and stakeholders. In particular, the two organizations are looking forward to the definition of the next steps, as foreseen by the Roadmap, including the expected Standardization Requests from the European Commission.

Elena Santiago Cid, CEN and CENELEC’s Director General, commented: “Through this Roadmap, the European Commission shows once more its trust in the strategic role played by standards in fostering the dissemination of a promising new technology. On the 30th Anniversary of the Single Market, this is another good reminder of the power of standards in the making of Europe. At CEN and CENELEC, we are committed to helping turn the vision of a fully decarbonised energy system into reality”.