More Hype than Hope. Hydrogen Policy, Projects and Environmental Conflicts

Beatrice Negro and Maria Enrica Virgillito

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: Hydrogen plays a central role in policies aimed at decarbonisation, energy autonomy, industrial competitiveness, and development. This study analyses hydrogen policies, revealing how their design may undermine just transition goals and instead reinforce existing spatial inequalities. Drawing on IEA data on clean hydrogen projects, investment trends are examined. A spatial analysis combining project data with environmental conflicts, sourced from the Atlas of Environmental Justice, reveals a concentration of hydrogen projects in areas affected by ecological degradation and socio-environmental disparities, raising concerns about the socio-ecological distributive effects. Hydrogen development appears largely driven by market logics and seems unlikely to meet climate targets.

Keywords: energy transition; industrial policy; hydrogen policy; environmental justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ppm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2025-28.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2025/28

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).