Balancing national electricity and transport systems with Fuel Cell Cars and Hydrogen

Fuel cells and hydrogen technologies have the potential to decarbonize both transport and energy sectors across the EU. Today, several initiatives and projects have successfully proven this high potential by means of research as well as demonstration actions. However, the acceptance on these technologies for public and private stakeholders and especially for the general public is a critical aspect which remains lagging behind technical progresses. Thus, increasing awareness in a wide sense in the EU as a whole becomes a key task to achieve the expected deployment of these technologies and their generalized implementation as foreseen in the different EU and member states energy roadmaps. This paper describes the state of the art in the advances made towards awareness and public acceptance on fuel cells and hydrogen technologies inside the different initiatives carried out at the moment. After that, it enters to describe the goals and advances of the recently started HY4ALL project which is devoted to align efforts from the main stakeholders in the EU and to nurture from existing initiatives to show its society the potential, opportunities, strengths and benefits of these technologies by means of dedicated communication strategies and actions. These communication strategies are implemented by means of a series of tools and resources to achieve wider penetration considering the features and specificities of targeted audiences including a reference web platform, a 'hydrogen and society roadshow', demonstration items and end applications as well as a study on macro benefits on these technologies and dedicated debates across eleven member states.