Communities are important testing grounds for more environmentally friendly and sustainable energy technologies.  With respect to hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, communities can play an important role in many ways:

			They are disposed to long term thinking, and thus consider the wider socio-economic and environmental implications of H2&FC technology
			As public institutions, they are an appropriate body to undertake the build-up of the infrastructure necessary to H2&FC adoption
			They control “captive fleets” of vehicles and public projects, which are key as early technology adopters and demonstrators of the technolog
			They can foster public acceptance and influence consumer attitudes
			They can promote the formation of localised H2&FC “clusters”, fostering expertise in the field

Roads2HyCom has mapped existing and potential hydrogen community sites. These identified hydrogen community sites have been assessed against a set of metrics and then categorised with generic profiles.

To help gather information on potential Hydrogen Communities, Roads2HyCom launched an on-line “Registration of Interest” for communities in May 2006.  From the data gathered, Roads2HyCom has built a database of existing and proposed hydrogen community projects.  This database is available through the Roads2HyCom website.

A report on the results from analysing the data gathered is also available to download. (See below)

Roads2HyCom has studied hydrogen community projects in order to identify the criteria for long-term success, based on the experiences and lessons learned from relevant initiatives worldwide.  This study was based on interviews with project managers from 11 demonstration projects.  The report on the results from this study is available to download from below.

	Reports:
			Profiling of Hydrogen Communities in Europe: A framework for self-evaluation and advice on success factors - 1.2MB
			Results from the Communities Registration - 0.3MB
			Experiences of Hydrogen Communities - 0.4MB

Roads2HyCom Definition of a Hydrogen Community: A "hydrogen community" is a geographic community (e.g. a city or a region) whose circumstances make it suitable to take a leading role in hydrogen and related technology. It is characterised by a strong participative approach between stakeholders and an enabling framework for coordinated and accelerated uptake of hydrogen-related technologies within an overall sustainable energy framework. Typically, this type of community is driven by certain goals, such as energy security, job creation, local air quality, exploitation of abundant renewable resources etc., for which it sees that the integration of hydrogen and related technologies can play a role.