Within the greater efforts of local governments to reduce the environmentally negative impact of urban activities including temporary events, this report shows that hydrogen fuel cell generators can be part of the toolbox of solution, if the right framework conditions are met. Local governments have both an incentive as well as the right mandates in place to promote this technology along with other options to improve the environmental footprint of construction sites and other temporary events. At the same time, the applicability of this solution in the urban environment will rise or fall based on the further development of the (green) hydrogen sector in general. While local governments are in a good position to set up a good incentive framework for this solution, the truth is that if the overall competitiveness and logistic accessibility of green hydrogen does not improve, hydrogen gensets risk losing the competitive edge with battery solutions powered by an increasingly decarbonised grid. Nevertheless, there is a real argument to be made for facilitating the roll out hydrogen gensets in the urban environment for specific applications and under circumstances where green hydrogen is either already easily available, or where it is not possible to deploy batteries which are powered by renewable electricity, or where extended periods of re-charging are not an option.
This report has been written within the scope of the EVERYWH2ERE project, under D6.9 “City policies and regulatory framework for the support of the spreading of EVERYWH2ERE FC gensets”. ICLEI was a partner in this project and led the development of this resource.