Overview of NHA Activities in the Development of Consensus Standards for Hydrogen Energy
by Karen Hall
Vice President, Technical Operations of the
National Hydrogen Association

On January 28, 2003, the President of the United States launched a US Hydrogen Initiative, based on extensive planning by the U.S. Department of Energy. President Bush challenged the nation to work toward a vision for hydrogen that suggested “With a new national commitment…the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free."

This statement was made following nearly two years of DOE planning, which included workshops to create a vision of America’s transition to a Hydrogen Economy and the creation of a National Hydrogen Roadmap.

The National Hydrogen Association took part in these workshops, including some of the planning as well as leading a session at the Roadmap workshops.

Role of the National Hydrogen Association
A trade association helps its members achieve their goals by drawing upon the diversity of its membership. This allows the association to maintain objectivity in carrying out its programs with the strength of the combined membership’s commitment to realizing a hydrogen energy future.

The NHA provides a forum to build consensus around pathways forward, which is especially important in the development of safety, codes and standards. The NHA also provides a forum for advocating partnerships between member companies, between government and industry, and academia. This leads to funding opportunities, joint ventures, project teaming, and more recently, educational activities, like the Hydrogen Student Design Contest.

A transition to a future hydrogen energy economy requires commitment from many stakeholders, including energy companies, industrial gas suppliers, automotive manufacturers, technology manufacturers, government organizations, universities, and research organizations. The membership of the NHA encompasses each of these stakeholders which have made a commitment to hydrogen. The strength of the National Hydrogen Association stems from the diversity of its membership and draws upon the expertise of these leading organizations in hydrogen safety, production, storage, distribution, and utilization. This diverse membership enables the NHA to maintain objectivity in our role and commitment to a transition to a hydrogen economy.

The National Hydrogen Association is a natural forum for building consensus, developing viable pathways to a hydrogen economy, acting as a catalyst in the development of consensus codes and standards, advocating partnerships, advising government agencies on policies and demonstrations, offering guidance on R&D programs to achieve certain technical objectives, and serving as a clearinghouse for educational information.

The NHA has a large, diverse membership. Members include the automotive industry, energy companies, hydrogen suppliers, fuel cell manufacturers, universities, research institutions, and many other stakeholders with an interest in developing a hydrogen energy infrastructure. Membership is not limited to US organizations. In fact, our membership consists of a growing number of international or multinational companies, who are looking at the US market for hydrogen energy technologies. What does this diverse membership have in common? They are all dedicated to commercializing hydrogen-related energy systems.

What We Stand For
In the paper On the Road to Hydrogen: Policy Priorities, as adopted by the NHA membership in March 2003, safety, demonstration, and education and outreach are among the critical pathways necessary to create knowledge to meet the objectives of transitioning to a hydrogen energy future.

Transition to a Hydrogen Future
The NHA supports a logical commercialization path. The NHA recognizes the important role of domestic fossil fuel resources including coal, gasoline, natural gas and diesel to transition to a hydrogen economy. In the near-term, a significant portion of hydrogen will be produced from fossil fuel feedstocks. The NHA supports further technological development for these processes aimed at reducing the cost of hydrogen and reducing or eliminating the environmental effects from these methods.

Renewable Energy
The NHA also supports technological and economic development of renewable energy technologies, and envisions a growing portion of future hydrogen production to come from renewables. The end point would be a diverse portfolio of hydrogen generation technologies and feedstocks, with as much hydrogen production from renewables as is practical.

Portable Power
The NHA recognizes that portable power applications tolerate higher energy costs, and are therefore a near term market for large volume commercialization that can decrease the cost of hydrogen technologies for other applications.

Stationary Power
Stationary power markets are mid-term opportunities for hydrogen and offer increased efficiencies to the grid. Stationary power provides the largest opportunity for CO2 reductions, along with the reduction or elimination of other greenhouse gases.

Transportation
There is strong and growing interest in using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. With the market price of transportation fuels being higher than the market price for other applications this offers a unique opportunity for hydrogen to become cost competitive with conventional fuels. The NHA believes a thrust in the area of transportation will provide the largest, long term opportunity for commercial application of hydrogen energy technologies and contribute to the creation of a hydrogen energy infrastructure. Automobiles provide the best opportunity to engage the public now in the benefits and reasons to move toward hydrogen energy. Buses and fleets, however, can provide an even earlier market, with fewer infrastructure considerations through use of centralized refuelling and should be a central part of near term programs.

Safety
Research, development, and demonstration activities should be conducted for safety, handling, and utilization of hydrogen fuel by the public and these lessons must be incorporated into the developing codes, standards, and regulations. Safety must be a consideration across the board. The need for safety-related activities is urgent, which is why the NHA is leading the timely development of codes and standards. Participation by permitting agencies and the insurance industry is urged, along with equipment testing programs. The federal government must provide implementation training and barrier reduction downward to local/regional government. The NHA will work with government to develop programs for training and barrier reduction. The NHA is leading the timely development of codes and standards for hydrogen fuel use. We have a strong commitment to safety through publications on safety and safety workshops.

Education and Outreach
At the international, national, state, and local levels, efforts should be initiated to encourage strong community programs to develop, to serve market development needs, and to increase the understanding of all stakeholders. Databases and previous research results should be made available as broadly as possible to promote transfer of knowledge, broaden the research experience, and introduce new ways of thinking to established research organizations. It should be recognized that education is a continuum that stretches from creating knowledge to educating in schools, training workers, educating policymakers, and informing the public.

The NHA supports demonstration activities to achieve the goals of transitioning towards a hydrogen economy in stationary and transportation markets and to help understand and develop the hydrogen infrastructure. Demonstration projects, jointly funded by government and industry partnerships, should begin as soon as possible and practical and should be operational in a variety of applications and environments across the United States. The NHA supports full and open competition that encourages partnerships, results in a wide range of demonstration parameters, requires safety analysis, and provides a broad array of high-profile educational and information dissemination opportunities.

The NHA is committed to a high standard of information dissemination. We recognize the benefits to business development of a public educated about hydrogen and its related technologies.

Need for Consensus Standards
Hydrogen already plays a significant role in the world’s energy economy, but this role is almost exclusively as a chemical - hydrogen is rarely used as a fuel. The use of hydrogen as a fuel in the utility and transportation sectors faces hurdles that need to be overcome in order to transition to a hydrogen energy economy. In addition to a lack of infrastructure to support the widespread distribution and use of hydrogen, there exists a persistent perception that hydrogen is unsafe. Widespread hydrogen use will require that safety be intrinsic to all processes and systems. To develop a hydrogen infrastructure that has the public’s confidence in its safety and convenience, an industry consensus on safety issues is required. This includes the development of international codes and standards for the safe use of hydrogen energy systems.

Collaboration with other standard bodies is a key element. NHA’s technical goal is to support the creation of draft standards for hydrogen systems and components using the expertise of our membership.

Perceived obstacles for hydrogen energy include the lack of infrastructure to support widespread distribution. It is necessary to develop an infrastructure that has industry consensus on safety issues, product certification protocols and compatible standards and formats. In this way we can ensure that safety is designed into the systems, and that these systems allow for competitive fairness.

The NHA conducts two Hydrogen Codes and Standards Workshops each year, which are open to all interested parties. The most recent one was held in Detroit, Michigan last September. Proceedings are available online in the October 2003 Hydrogen Safety Report at www.HydrogenSafety.info.

The NHA also works with others to hold seminars on handling hydrogen, including a comparison of hydrogen properties with conventional fuels. These seminars done by request, with sufficient resources provided. The most recent Seminar was a Short Course held in Miami, Florida preceding the Fuel Cell Seminar in November. The NHA will also hold a Hydrogen Workshop at the 2004 Fuel Cell Seminar.

In addition to proceedings from workshops, the Hydrogen Safety report lists upcoming meetings relating to hydrogen and fuel cell codes and standards development, and provides updates for ongoing national and international codes and standards activities.

The NHA has members and staff who are active participants in the International Organization of Standardization and its Technical Committee 197, which is responsible for the presentation and approval of the developed standards. IEC/TC 105, which addresses fuel cells, also benefits from NHA member and staff participation. Updates on these activities can be found periodically in our Hydrogen Safety Report.

The NHA works closely with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the standard development organizations (SDOs) who meet monthly by conference call and quarterly in person to discuss issues and minimize inconsistency and duplication of effort in the standard development process.

Finally, the NHA facilitates a broad dialog on technical and logistics issues related to developing standards and implementing requirements through our own annual conference as well as attending conferences outside of the US hydrogen community. The NHA’s next conference, which will be held April 26-30 in Hollywood, California, will provide an opportunity to discuss issues such as implementing global technical regulations, standards for portable power, siting requirements for hydrogen refueling stations, and many other topics of national and international significance (www.hydrogenconference.org).

The NHA currently has active working groups addressing hydrogen storage, Global Technical Regulations, The Distributed Energy Resources Road Show, portable power, and the U.S. Model Codes.

In addition, the NHA lends support to National and International Efforts by providing hydrogen safety expertise to ongoing SDO activities, facilitating a dialog on issues through our newsletters and websites, and working to keep interested parties informed of new activities or changes in direction. In this way, the codes, standards, and regulations can develop faster with minimal duplication of effort.

Importance of Education and Outreach
The NHA utilizes many education and outreach tools that are designed to help build consensus and prepare the market for hydrogen energy technologies. It is important to realize that the market includes more than the end use customer. To be successful, an education and outreach program must include the code officials, decision makers, and public who may be involved in the decision-making. A project that has public support, a champion in the government, and informed permitting officials has a significant chance of going forward.

Without these projects, the opportunities to reach the end user are limited. The members of the National Hydrogen Association recognize the importance of reaching these and other key audiences in advance of commercialization.

The NHA has held safety workshops open to the public to tackle the vast job of educating Codes officials, emergency response teams, regulators, legislators and other interested parties.

For More Information
The mission of the NHA is to foster the development of hydrogen technologies and their utilization in the industrial and commercial applications and promote the transition role of hydrogen in the energy field. This paper presented several ways that the NHA seeks to fulfill this mission. More detailed information can be found on our websites:

*www.HydrogenAssociation.org is the main NHA website. It contains public information in the form of press releases, a quarterly newsletter, announcements, and links to our Members’ Only site, including committee documents.

*www.HydrogenConference.org provides information on the NHA’s signature event, our annual conference and exhibit.

*www.HydrogenSafety.info contains information specific to hydrogen safety, codes and standards development activities.

The NHA has two offices – one in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom. For more information on the NHA, please visit any of our websites listed here, or contact the author directly.