The Emerging Global Trends in Hydrogen Energy Research for Achieving the Net Zero Goals

Abstract

As the world is entering a phase of realization to mend ways to build a climate neutral, healthy, and sustainable environment all around and many prominent steps are taken to achieve the goal of net zero [1,2]. Advancement of materials used for energy and production purposes are being transformed and developed in ways which will ensure sustainable development without the harming of the ecology [3]. One such strong action brought is the use of hydrogen energy towards climate neutrality [4]. Hydrogen is now considered a very important product for aiming zero waste as it can make possible to remove fossil fuels usage and will play a very important role in the energy transformation of world to sustainable development goals [5]. It is very important to reduce the emission of carbon from industries and vehicles, and at the same time give a longer energy storage [6]. As the European Deal and the United Nations moves forward for attaining a net zero goals with introduction of clean hydrogen energy and its uses have been the showstopper for various conversions in various sectors which will ensure reaching the global sustainability [7,8]. The research in hydrogen energy is has become very popular since the past decades. From the search results of Scopus database with the keyword “hydrogen energy”, above 15000 documents with 7000 patents are found (collected on 12 October 2021) [9]. If we go through the trend, we can find that the number published articles get steep increased from 2011 and reaches maximum in 2012, when 2261 articles were published. Then suddenly, there was steep fall, but after 2015, there is growing interest in the field (Fig. 1). This is mainly due to establishment of various hydrogen energy missions and policies for clean energy.