Hydrogen Powered Transport and Distribution Justice

Hydrogen Powered Transport and Distribution Justice

Distribution justice often defined as the "spatial and temporal allocation of goods and ills across society" (Dillman and Heinonen, 2022). As a form of energy justice it addresses the fair and unfair distribution of resources. This paper examines the future of hydrogen powered transport through the lens of distribution justice, analysing how this shift could affect different social groups.

Currently, through the use of combustion engines, the transport sector equates for over 25% of global greenhouse emissions (GHG) (United Nations, 2021). To meet the COP21 goals set out by the UN, the transport sector must make changes away from combustion engines and towards a cleaner alternative such as hydrogen (United Nations, 2024). Hydrogen fuelled transportation can significantly reduce global emissions through the implementation of fuel cell powered engines or hydrogen internal combustion engines (Kurtz et al., 2019). If green hydrogen is used, hydrogen powered vehicles have the potential to transform the transport sector as they are a “zero emission vehicle” with a by-product of only water (Kurtz et al., 2019).

As it stands most of the hydrogen used today is derived from natural gas and produces hydrogen through steam reforming (also known as grey hydrogen). The current reliance on natural gas leads to distribution justice issues as it unequally affects regions where natural gas is extracted and processed. This process poses harm on the environment and communities living around this infrastructure (Abdalla et al., 2018). As the steam reforming process releases GHG emissions, the justice implications of this process create poor air quality in these areas and can lead to long term health conditions. Also, there is a shortage in natural gas globally so transitioning to green hydrogen (which is derived from renewables) would remove this distribution injustice as there would be no GHG emissions released (Abdalla et al., 2018).

Hydrogen requires a large amount of infrastructure to supply the transportation industry, including production, delivery, storage, compression and dispensing of hydrogen on a global scale (Kurtz et al., 2019). Distribution justice issues arise when infrastructure is located in positions that disproportionately benefit or burden a particular group (Dillman and Heinonen, 2022). The distribution and allocation of fuelling stations is crucial in defining who can adopt hydrogen powered vehicles. Fuelling stations need to be in regions that are equally accessible in both urban and rural areas. If this infrastructure is only located in urban regions where demand and economic gain is highest, groups living in rural areas won’t have access to cleaner energy and are therefore subject to distributive injustice (Kurtz et al., 2019).

The growth of a hydrogen fuelled economy is expected to generate a wide range of jobs across a range of skill levels, however these jobs are mostly located in economically robust and urban areas (Bezdek, 2020). In the US (where hydrogen is becoming an established energy source) the higher paid salaries, for jobs associated to hydrogen, tend to cluster in specific areas often surrounding research hubs in city centres (Bezdek, 2020). As examined before certain groups living outside of these areas will have lower access to employment and miss out on cleaner energy opportunities. Distributive justice issues then arise as people don’t have access to employment which further widens socio economic gaps between lower and higher income communities.

To conclude, as we embark on the commercial use of hydrogen, policy makers should examine how the hydrogen transition is ‘just’. This paper shows that distribution justice is crucial in ensuring communities get equal access to cleaner energy and aren’t left behind in the transport transition.

Reference List

Abdalla, A.M., Hossain, S., Nisfindy, O.B., Azad, A.T., Dawood, M. and Azad, A.K. 2018. Hydrogen production, storage, transportation and key challenges with applications: A review. Energy Conversion and Management. 165, pp.602–627.

Bezdek, R.H. 2020. The Hydrogen Economy and Jobs of the Future. ECS Transactions. 96(1), pp.107–120.

Dillman, K.J. and Heinonen, J. 2022. A ‘just’ hydrogen economy: A normative energy justice assessment of the hydrogen economy. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 167, p.112648.

Kurtz, J., Sprik, S. and Bradley, T.H. 2019. Review of transportation hydrogen infrastructure performance and reliability. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 44(23), pp.12010–12023.

United Nations. 2021. Climate Change. [Accessed 4 November 2024a]. Available from: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/media_gstc/FACT_SHEET_Climate_Change.pdf.

United Nations. 2024. The Paris Agreement | UNFCCC. [Accessed 4 November 2024b]. Available from: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement.