About

The Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, a public–private partnership, has been a key accelerator supporting Hydrogen Valleys across the EU. So far, they have supported 21 Hydrogen Valleys across 19 European countries, with the aim to double that number in Europe by 2025. To help ensure that hydrogen policies and projects are grounded in robust and comparable evidence, the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) supports the development of science-based methods for environmental and social impact measurement.

Challenge

The JRC wanted to better understand how to measure the social impacts of Hydrogen Valleys. Not only the positive effects, like jobs and skills, but also potential negative impacts across the value chain. This includes impacts on workers, local communities, upstream suppliers and end users.

A key issue they considered is practicality. Frameworks already exist that provide strong scientific grounding and help identify what topics matter, but they are often high-level. These frameworks do not always tell a practitioner what to measure, where to get the data, or how to interpret results in a way that is comparable across projects. In the context of Hydrogen Valleys, that becomes even harder because data needs to be gathered from many different organisations and partners.

The goals of the challenge were clear:

• Developing voluntary recommendations that make social impact assessment more consistent and harmonized across Hydrogen Valleys and users.
• Building on methods that are transparent, science-based and open-source.
• Adding to environmental metrics to support a more holistic view of sustainability.
• And making sure the result reflects real-world needs by consulting Hydrogen Valley representatives and experts.

Solution

In 2025, PRé in collaboration with the JRC developed practical recommendations to assess social impacts in Hydrogen Valleys. The project started with scoping and mapping the most material topics to measure. This included reviewing existing frameworks such as the EU study on circular approaches for a sustainable and affordable clean energy transition, a JRC conceptual framework on social risks and impacts in hydrogen value chains, and the Social Value Initiative handbook. The next step was mapping topics to stakeholder groups: workers, local communities, society, upstream value chain actors and end users.

We then translated these foundations into day-to-day use by developing clear definitions, setting out practical, commonly used indicators and adding interpretation guidance – beyond quantitative results, social impacts need context through qualitative insights.

We landed on several core indicators, including:

• worker health and safety
• skills development
• local employment
• public acceptance for communities
• energy resilience and security for society
• responsible material sourcing for upstream actors
• and affordable access to energy
• supply chain criticality for end users

The draft recommendations were tested through interviews and a stakeholder workshop with Hydrogen Valley experts.

A case study was also done on secondary data, to assess the topic of material sourcing. The case study which looked at flagging higher-risk signals for key materials used in hydrogen infrastructure and for certain sourcing locations. This can help teams prioritize due diligence and supplier engagement early, before risks become real impacts. All resulting insights were incorporated into the final version of the recommendations, which serve as a basis for further testing and development by Hydrogen Valleys.

Benefits

For the JRC, the key benefit is a practical set of recommendations that makes social impact assessment easier to apply in Hydrogen Valleys. These recommendations translate high-level frameworks into clear indicators and interpretation prompts, so results are more consistent and easier to use in decision making.

For Hydrogen Valley stakeholders, the benefit of the recommendations is a shared way to track what matters to people and society. This is important information to have, alongside environmental performance data. Social metrics can support alignment across partners, clearer communication of societal value, and earlier visibility of risks that can affect delivery – such as worker safety, public acceptance, and upstream supply chain issues. Over time, this approach will make it easier to compare progress across projects and build trust with the stakeholders that Hydrogen Valleys depend on.

Working with PRé was a very pleasant experience. We were impressed with the team’s project management skills and ability to quickly apply their expertise to a new topic. We were also pleased with PRé’s stakeholder engagement, both in sourcing inputs that strengthen the final conclusions and in sharing their know-how with interested stakeholders. The work done by PRé constitutes a strong foundation for the social impact analysis of hydrogen valleys.

Tatiana D’Agostini, Project Officer at JRC