GrHyFONDDOR Project: Green Hydrogen-Flexible and Optimised Networks by interDisciplinary, multiDimensional and methOdological Research

Green hydrogen is a key vector in the energy transition according to the multiple “energy” roadmaps and national plans aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. It has a strong potential to make easier the decarbonization of industrial and energy-intensive sectors and can also be used as a green fuel, in particular for heavy transport modes, for which current electric battery technologies are not well adapted.

For “green” hydrogen to play a key role in the future energy mix, the main obstacles, beyond the scaling up of technologies and the necessary cost reduction, lie in its ability to really exploit the flexibility of supply chains in combination with renewable sources and in the necessary evolution of governance towards a truly green energy future.

The GrHyFONDDOR project (led by Laboratoire de Génie Chimique – INP Toulouse, TBS Education and the company Persee) aims to model and optimize green hydrogen systems within the framework of a systemic, dynamic, and integrated approach, combining engineering and economics.

Its scientific objective is twofold:

1) to take into account the economic aspects during the design phase of the “hydrogen” supply chain with the appropriate level of granularity to model the different technological bricks (production, storage, distribution) and to integrate the specific constraints of the territories;

2) to develop original knowledge on the conditions that will enable these energy systems (policies, supply chain governance organization and economic issues) to fully exploit the decarbonization potential of hydrogen.

The hydrogen systems concerned by this study are of the “Power-to-Hydrogen” type with low temperature electrolysis, powered by renewable sources (wind, solar) as well as by the electrical grid. The main innovation lies in the spatial and temporal modeling of the value chain integrating the tactical and strategic decisions of the different actors interacting on the corresponding markets.

The project targets the challenge of energy transition, in an original interdisciplinary approach.This project is financed by the ANR within the framework of the Generic 2021 Call for Projects under the N° ANR-21-CE05-0039-03.

It is led within TBS Education by Sylvain BOURJADE and Catherine MULLER of the Finance Economy Econometrics Laboratory.

It is planned to last 42 months from 01/07/2022 to 31/08/2025.