Assessing the viability of a european hydrogen certificate market

The European Union’s ambitious hydrogen strategy faces a geographic mismatch between low-cost renewable hydrogen production potential and industrial demand clusters. This is made worse by rigid mass balancing of hydrogen and its certificate, and lack of dedicated transportation backbone. To overcome these constraints, this dissertation investigates the feasibility of a temporarily decoupled attribute market for European hydrogen, which separates the physical commodity from its environmental claim. The study develops a partial equilibrium model using real-world data on capacity, demand, and costs across Europe for the 2024-2030 period. Results show that this certificate market is both economically and environmentally viable. It successfully incentivizes low cost clean producers to increase total production by approximately 51,000 tonnes in the analysis period, leading to a reduction of 0.62 million tonnes of CO2−eq in emissions through direct displacement of carbon-intensive hydrogen. Model projections reveal general interest in the market and an exponential growth. Certificate equilibrium price is expected to fall from 3.74 euroes/kg H2 in 2024 to 1.88 euroes/kg H2 by 2030, while its traded volume rises from 0.03 million tonnes to 1.2 million tonnes in the seven-year period. Ultimately, the findings suggest that a decoupled renewable hydrogen certificate market could serve as a cost-effective, transitional bridge for the early-stage hydrogen economy until physical infrastructure matures. This market aligns regional strengths with Euro pean decarbonization goals, and provides necessary financial incentives without relying on national subsidies.