Public perception of hydrogen storage

Recently, the European Commission has set the 20-20-20 target (20% GHG emission reduction versus 2005, 20% renewable energy share, 20% energy efficiency increase). Because of this, a more strongly fluctuating energy supply will be very likely, causing the need for energy storage. This will confront society with emerging technologies that are unknown to most lay people (1). One of the possibilities for energy storage is underground hydrogen storage, studied in the Hyunder project, of which this study is a small part. How the public will view hydrogen storage could be of crucial influence on its implementation. This study is to our knowledge the first investigation of lay peoples beliefs of and associations with hydrogen storage. <p> Previous research and experience have shown that the public can have very different views and concerns about these issues than experts, and a lack of attention to this has caused major problems in other energy projects, such as wind energy projects or CO2 storage projects (2,3). Currently, little to nothing is known regarding public perception of energy storage, specifically regarding hydrogen storage. There are also some methodological challenges to quantitatively studying public perception of something that is most likely unknown to most of the public. Therefore a more elaborate first exploration of lay people beliefs regarding hydrogen storage and associated topics with qualitative methods seemed warranted. The current study used the mental model approach with 16 in-depth interviews conducted in the Netherlands using a rather open interview protocol, eliciting public beliefs and perceptions by allowing interviewees to express their beliefs and perceptions of hydrogen storage and associated topics freely without being influenced. <p> Results showed, as expected, that people were rather unaware of the option of hydrogen storage. In general, people were not familiar with energy sources and the energy transition overall. Although most people had heard of hydrogen and had some associations, not many were correct and only few people fully understood the possibilities of hydrogen as energy carrier. None of the people had heard of hydrogen storage, or understood the necessity of energy storage to ensure reliability of energy supply when implementing a higher share of renewables in the energy mix. Many mentioned the association with chemistry in general, and several people knew that it can be used as fuel. Due to the association with water (the Dutch word for hydrogen is waterstof߿ݩ, many misconceptions came to light about the aspects of hydrogen. Therefore few people mentioned a risk of explosion, but also few people understood the possible use of hydrogen. People had a very hard time imagining why one would want to store hydrogen. Most mentioned was the association with gas stations, so the use of storage was to have it available for transport. There was a severe lack of understanding regarding the possibilities of hydrogen as energy storage option for surplus renewable energy. Practically everyone lacked the knowledge to understand the whole chain of reasoning; from the need to increase use of renewables, to the problem of intermittent energy supply by renewables, to the need to store energy, to hydrogen being a possibility for this, to how to produce hydrogen, etcetera. After people were given information on this reasoning, they were mostly quite enthusiastic. However, this conclusion should be nuanced by the fact that most interviewees had a hard time envisioning any other options for our future energy system, and also by most interviewees perception of having too little information to form an opinion on hydrogen storage. The results should be interpreted carefully in general, as this was a first exploratory study based on 16 in-depth interviews, which means that although the whole possible range of beliefs and associations has likely been uncovered, one cannot draw statistically sound conclusions about the amount of people with similar beliefs and associations in the population. Also, the beliefs and associations found in this study are more likely to be representative of the Dutch general populations beliefs and associations than of those of local stakeholders, or of other nations. Locally, many other factors such as process management influence public perception of a project