CERIC-ERIC Expert Group on Fuel Cells

One of the greatest challenges of our time is to mitigate the global climate change caused by anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases, mainly generated by use of fossil fuels. A critical part of the solution is to substitute energy generation based on fossil fuels by the more renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal power and others) and one of the main issues is to provide efficient energy storage for a large subset of intermittent energy sources. This can be achieved by various means, such as physical storage (e.g. pump hydro storage, flywheels, compressed air) and/or chemical conversion (e.g. batteries, hydrogen and ammonia generation and storage, artificial carbon-based fuels) (Figure 1). The second family of the energy storage solutions is close to maturity for commercial deployment, therefore research and development proceeds at a fast pace and enjoys significant investments at all levels. For this reason, it is foreseen that the activities in this direction will be an important role for CERIC-ERIC in the near future. While the involvement of CERIC-ERIC in the research on electrochemical batteries has been already discussed a the previous report (Bozzini 2020), the present document on the one hand focuses on the assessment of CERIC-ERIC activities in the field of electrochemical energy conversion by various types of fuel cells and, on the other hand, expounds recommendations to enhance its the role of this fuel cell community.