Research Publications

Clean hydrogen is a promising decarbonization pathway, yet it continues to face a chicken-and-egg problem where high costs and sparse infrastructure have not aligned with demand. To better coordinate infrastructure deployment, we propose an ecosystem planning and pre-optimization framework to systematically reduce the number of supply chain decisions (configurations, locations, and timing) while incorporating external system drivers for more well-informed analysis. We apply this framework to Michigan and analyze 448 ecosystem drivers across seven planning categories, generating 13 clean hydrogen planning principles for a Michigan-based hydrogen economy. For a near-term demonstration ecosystem, we identify return-to-base medium- and heavy-duty trucking applications in southeast Michigan as most favorable for further assessment. The combination of multi-criteria decision analysis for site suitability with down-selection for technologies and demand centers reduces model size, improves computational performance, and yields a more accurate solution.