The  objective of  ‘Stairway to Hydrogen’  is to make a blue-print for a sustainable hydrogen industry targeted at de-centralised hydrogen economies where >10% of the electricity demand is covered by hydrogen from biomass.

The  strategy of this IP is based on combining biological and thermochemical conversion routes to enable a tailor-made production process for hydrogen from multiple biomass feedstocks. This way the merits of either route are fully exploited to produce the highest obtainable yield of hydrogen.

‘Stairway to Hydrogen’ integrates all required technologies, novel and advanced, to develop a highly efficient concept with major cost reductions in the entire production chain for hydrogen-from-biomass: Biomass feedstocks throughout Europe and pretreatment methodologies are assessed for suitability for hydrogen production (composition, security of supply, logistics and environmental impact).
The biological route, i.e. dark hydrogen fermentation followed by photofermentation or methane fermentation, is used for the fermentable part of the biomass. The thermochemical route, e.g. supercritical water gasification, is used for the non-fermentable part.
The gas streams are upgraded to fuel cell specifications. System integration, exergy analyses and benchmarking are applied to warrant optimal, sustainable performance of all process units. Finally, socio-economical studies are included to screen and prepare future stake-holders for the implementation of this industry.

In ‘Stairway to hydrogen’ 19 European countries, 5 candidate countries and Russia are represented to assemble the critical mass needed to integrate the different technologies into a novel and coherent process and to subsequently make a breakthrough in cost-effective production of hydrogen from biomass.
The quality of  every sub-project in this IP is guarded by one or more prominent specialists, from research or industry, in the respective technology. The participation of the 13 SME’s warrants the commercial exploitation of project results as soon as they become available. 

This multidisciplinary and multinational consortium eradicates the current fragmentation of research efforts and reinforces the European Research Area in global sustainable energy issues.