Case Study: Research Policy Interface Thematic Group
National Hydrogen Strategy, 2023
Government of Ireland, Department of Environment, Climate and Communications and Transport. https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/national-hydrogen-strategy.pdf
Academics and Institutional Affiliation:
Hannah Daly, Paul Deane and Fionn Rogan
Sustainability Institute, MaREI, University College Cork
Evidence of policy outcome referencing the role of the research:
Yes, page 46 of the National Hydrogen Strategy states that “Final Energy Demand for domestic sectors were taken from scenarios developed by MaREI to support the Sectoral Carbon Budgets Development in 2022.”
Research undertaken that informed or underpinned the policy outcome:
The MaREI Centre team at UCC developed energy systems modelling that quantified sectoral carbon budget development pathways using the TIMES Ireland Model (Balyk et al. 2022).
UCC produced additional scenarios of ‘low energy demand’ to assess the impact of reduced consumption trends on the mitigation pathways (Gaur et al. 2022).
Key learnings for you from this research-policy bridging process:
Translating the research results into policy insights and engaging with policy makers is critically important in bridging between research and policy. Engagement here with the Department of Energy, Climate and Communications team that was developing the National Hydrogen Strategy was critically important in this case study. A number of meetings discussing UCC energy scenario results and the potential demands for hydrogen in different sectors (electricity, transport and heating) proved very useful in providing clear insights to the policy system.
SDGs impacted:
SDG 7 & SDG 13
