This project aims to plant the ‘seed’ for a transdisciplinary research project whose general goals will be to assess the feasibility and the sustainability-related impacts of green hydrogen (GH2) deployment as part of just energy transitions. The proposed project will itself be transdisciplinary, insofar as the precise questions and methods for the follow-up research project will be framed collectively. In other words, the proposed seed-funded project will engage academics, policymakers, industry, and civil society in interdisciplinary and community-based problem-framing around GH2 as an aspect of just energy transitions. The focus is on European GH2, but the innovative approach to transdisciplinary problemframing employed, tested, and refined will be applicable to other transitions and geographical spaces.

Energy transitions are complex socio-technical transformations demanding rapidity, due to the increasing effects of anthropogenic climate change; but should adhere to justice as a goal in and of itself and as a means for dealing with socio-political contestation. Questions being posed by academia regarding just energy transitions are often isolated within disciplines and disembedded from actors on the ground. Although specialized inquiry is valuable, it does not facilitate appropriation and transformative action. Green hydrogen is a relevant case study within energy transitions, given its crucial role in the decarbonization of certain sectors (as attributed, for instance, by the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy and by REPowerEU) and given the contestation surrounding it. Some see hydrogen as amenable to fast market deployment, with positive impacts in many realms: decarbonization, re-industrialization, and employment creation. But there are possible feasibility issues around deployment, as well as disadvantages (the unsustainable extraction of raw materials, unequal partnerships, or rebound effects). Furthermore, the feasibility and impacts will differ between European regions, perhaps deepening the semi-peripheral role of the least industrialized regions or perhaps offering an opportunity for convergence. We believe these mixed views result in part from unidisciplinary perspectives distanced from the actual playing field of green hydrogen; such distinctions may hinder a rapid and just move to the use of GH2 within the energy transition while underlining the need to reframe the problems and methods for researching its development. Our seed funding project specifically seeks to design a transdisciplinary research project that permits academic knowledge-sharing as much as coordination among stakeholders with transformative power.