Towards Hydrogen Safety Education and Training

The onset and further development of the hydrogen economy are known to be constrained by safety barriers, as well as by the level of public acceptance of new applications. Educational and training programmes in hydrogen safety, which are currently absent in Europe, are considered to be a key instrument in lifting these limitations and to ensure the safe introduction of hydrogen as an energy carrier. Therefore, the European Network of Excellence ‘Safety of Hydrogen as an Energy Carrier’ (NoE HySafe) embarked on the establishment of the e-Academy of Hydrogen Safety. This work is led by the University of Ulster and carried out in cooperation with international partners from five other universities (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain; University of Pisa, Italy; Warsaw University of Technology, Poland; Instituto Superior Technico, Portugal; University of Calgary, Canada), two research institutions (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany), and one enterprise (GexCon, Norway). The development of an International Curriculum on Hydrogen Safety Engineering, aided by world-class experts from within and outside NoE HySafe, is of central importance to the establishment of the e-Academy of Hydrogen Safety. Despite its key role in identifying the knowledge framework of the subject matter, and its role in aiding educators with the development of teaching programmes on hydrogen safety, no such curriculum appears to have been developed previously. The current structure of the International Curriculum on Hydrogen Safety Engineering, and the motivation behind it, are described in this paper. Future steps in the development of a system of hydrogen safety education and training in Europe are briefly described.