The Case studies section of Clean Hydrogen Explorer platform provides a scenario-based analysis covering climate, water resources, and hydrogen production capacity aspects considering five hydrogen valleys across Europe:
Green Hysland (Spain)
ImagHyne (France)
Ephyra (Greece)
NAVH (Croatia)
EastgateH2V (Slovakia)
This page reports data source and assumptions done.
Meteorological data
European Meteorological Observations (EMO-5)
Provides high-resolution observational data over Europe at 5 km spatial resolution, including temperature and precipitation fields used for historical impact assessment and climate model bias correction.
Source: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-3249-2022
Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3) – phases 3b
We used precipitation and temperature. Data are available globally on a 0.5° × 0.5° grid, with historical simulations (1850–2014) and future projections (2015–2100) under multiple Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).
Source: https://data.isimip.org/search/
Hydrogen data
Interaction with local authorities/stakeholders to collect plant-specific information on hydrogen production capacity and water-use coefficients (withdrawal, consumption, and return flows associated with hydrogen production processes).
Temporal scope
Although the underlying datasets span long historical periods and end-of-century projections, the dashboard focuses on near- and mid-term assessment:
Current scenario
Given the temporal coverage of the available hydro-meteorological and energy datasets, the historical period considered in the analysis spans 2000–2019.Future scenarios - Reference and Pessimistic future scenarios
Near- to mid-term projections for the period 2026–2055. This choice balances forward-looking relevance with robustness, limiting uncertainties associated with long-term climate, socio-economic, and energy-system projections.
Climate scenarios and modelling assumptions
The future analysis is based on two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report:
SSP3-7.0 (reference future scenario)
A “regional rivalry” pathway characterized by fragmented governance, limited international cooperation, and slow technological diffusion. Emissions remain high throughout the century, making this scenario broadly consistent with a continuation of current policy trends.SSP5-8.5 (pessimistic future scenario)
A fossil-fuel-driven development pathway with very high energy demand and minimal mitigation efforts, commonly used to explore upper-bound climate risks.
Lower-emission pathways (e.g. SSP1-2.6) were not included, as they assume rapid and globally coordinated mitigation efforts that are considered increasingly optimistic for mid-century assessments.
MRI-ESM2 was selected as global climate model, since it provides a balanced and well-documented representation of temperature, precipitation, and large-scale circulation patterns over Europe and the Mediterranean region.
LISFLOOD was selected as hydrological model. LISFLOOD is a spatially distributed, rainfall–runoff and routing model originally developed by the European Commission JRC for large-scale hydrological applications. It simulates river discharge, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, groundwater storage, and sectoral water abstractions. The model is portable and easily adaptable to different river basins and case studies, making it particularly suitable for harmonized climate impact assessments across heterogeneous European regions.
Methodological notes
Historical scenario consider Hydrogen plant as fully operational for all the period;
Hydrogen production target is considered constant in both current and future scenarios;
- Hydrogen plant has the lowest priority with respect to other water uses of the upstream catchment and environmental flow in the reference section;
- Environmental flow considered has been simulated with LISFLOOD by JRC;
Complete surface water supply conditions occur when surface water availability fully satisfies the potential withdrawal required for hydrogen production at full plant capacity; partial supply conditions occur when water availability is positive but insufficient to fully meet demand; no supply conditions occur when no surface water is available for abstraction.
Irrigation demand and consumption in LISFLOOD depends on the spatial distribution of irrigated areas represented in the Corine Land Cover dataset (2018), which underestimated irrigated land in many regions across Europe.
The analysis focuses on surface water availability, as LISFLOOD explicitly simulates river discharge and surface water dynamics, while groundwater processes and local aquifer interactions are represented in a simplified conceptual form. Therefore, surface water availability is considered the most robust and consistently simulated indicator of renewable water resources across all case studies.
All indicators are aggregated at the seasonal scale using the standard climatological grouping: winter (DJF: December–February), spring (MAM: March–May), summer (JJA: June–August), and autumn (SON: September–November). Seasonal values are computed as averages over all corresponding seasons within the considered simulation period, allowing the analysis of intra-annual variability and the identification of seasonal patterns.