The HI-PO project is a national initiative funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to develop a strategy for the development of hydrogen as an energy carrier in Portugal. The paper describes a hybrid methodology mainly based on the UK Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium initiative and on the EU project HyWays’ approach, involving an extensive consultative process.

The main objective was to build and evaluate scenarios for the future of hydrogen in Portugal with a panel of stakeholders representing different areas ranging from academia to industry and spanning energy and the environment. This was achieved by running a series of workshops and personal interviews where five scenarios were identified and assessed through a multi-criteria mapping process. Preliminary results indicate a wide range of opinions about the future of hydrogen in Portugal covering centralized to decentralized systems, renewable to fossil fuels and stationery or transport applications. There is only a slight preference for renewable-based scenarios, focussing on the use of hydrogen for road transport. No scenario is identified as a clear winner out of the evaluation process, probably indicating that there is still much work to be done in this respect to establish a clear vision of the future. Further development and analysis of pathways will lead to a first approach for a hydrogen roadmap for Portugal, which is the main objective of a parallel quantitative study currently being undertaken as a separate follow-up exercise.