Towards a peer-to-peer hydrogen economy framework

Abstract

The research community is seeking for novel technological/business models to speed up the decarbonization process, i.e. a decreasing relative reliance on carbon. The completion of decarbonization ultimately depends on the production and use of pure hydrogen as energy carrier. With respect to electricity, which is currently the most relevant and clean energy carrier, hydrogen has a fundamental advantage that it can be stored efficiently. In this research context, we propose a Peer-to-Peer Hydrogen Economy Framework based on decentralized production, storage and trading of energy. We apply the peer-to-peer paradigm for designing a virtual network, where peer software entities implement distributed algorithms for the localization of remote energy providers. The proposed approach has many advantages, both technical (availability, robustness, scalability) and socio-economic (shared responsibilities and improved competition).