Integrating Environmental Justice into Hydrogen Energy Transitions: Community-Based Analysis and Engagement in the SH2INE Project

Abstract

This master’s project examines how environmental justice considerations can be integrated into hydrogen energy transition planning and decision-making. As hydrogen is increasingly promoted as a key pathway for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors, we sought to understand how the impacts of this transition may be experienced by fenceline communities of hydrogen infrastructure development and how those experiences can inform more equitable energy system modeling. We conducted this research as part of the Sustainable, Holistic Hydrogen Integration Evaluation (SH2INE) project, an interdisciplinary effort to model interactions across the electricity, natural gas, transportation, and hydrogen systems in the Northeast United States. Our role within this broader project was to investigate how environmental justice considerations, particularly those that are not typically captured in quantitative models, can be identified and translated into indicators that can be integrated into those models and used to inform planning decisions. To do this, we used an ethnographic case study approach in two locations: Genesee County, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Genesee County represents a site where hydrogen development has already been proposed and contested, while Fairfield County reflects a context where hydrogen is still being discussed through planning and policy processes. We drew on multiple data sources, including interviews with key informants, analysis of public documents, and observations of public meetings, to understand how different actors engage with and perceive energy infrastructure development. We analyzed these data using a framework of distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice, which allowed us to examine how benefits and burdens are allocated, how decision-making processes are structured, and how community knowledge and identities are accounted for in planning. Our findings showed that community responses to hydrogen are shaped less by the specific characteristics of hydrogen energy technologies and more by prior experiences with development, existing environmental conditions, and the structure of decision-making processes. Across both sites, concerns consistently emerged around three areas. First, communities questioned whether the economic and environmental benefits described by developers would actually materialize locally, particularly in areas already facing environmental or economic burdens. Second, participants described engagement processes that allowed for input but did not appear to influence outcomes in meaningful ways. Third, community members emphasized that planning processes often overlook how people understand their relationships to land, place, and infrastructure, especially in historically marginalized or overburdened communities. Our key takeaway was that environmental justice in hydrogen development could not be addressed as a secondary consideration after sites were selected and projects were designed. Instead, injustice was produced through the processes that defined where and how development occurred. As a result, we argue that policy and planning frameworks need to integrate environmental justice considerations into early-stage decision-making, including site selection and infrastructure planning. To support this shift, we propose a set of indicators that translated qualitative insights into measurable criteria for evaluating distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice in modeling and decision-making contexts. Ultimately, this research demonstrated that the success of the hydrogen transition depends not only on technological innovation, but on the ability of institutions to address longstanding inequities in how energy systems were developed and governed. Without such changes, hydrogen risks following the same trajectory as previous energy transitions—technically successful, but socially contested and uneven in its impacts.