In recent years, newfound interest in the hydrogen economy from both industry and academia has helped to shed light on its potential. Hydrogen can enable an energy revolution by providing much needed flexibility in renewable energy systems. As a clean energy carrier, hydrogen offers a range of benefits for simultaneously decarbonising the transport, residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Hydrogen is shown here to have synergies with other low carbon alternatives, and can enable a more cost-effective transition to de-carbonised and cleaner energy systems. This paper presents the opportunities for the use of hydrogen in key sectors of the economy and identifies the benefits and challenges within the hydrogen supply chain for power-to-gas, power-to-power and gas-to-gas supply pathways. While industry players have already started market introduction of hydrogen fuel cell systems, including fuel cell electric vehicles and micro-combined heat and power devices, the use of hydrogen at grid-scale requires the challenges of clean hydrogen production, bulk storage, and distribution to be resolved. Ultimately, greater government support, in partnership with industry and academia, is still needed to realise hydrogen's potential across all economic sectors.

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(200 words)This paper assesses the value of distributed energy storage (ES) and informs the business case for its multiple applications in the future Great Britain (GB) electricity system. In contrast to earlier studies that focus on the benefits of ES for system operation and development, this work analyses the value that ES may deliver to the owner. For this purpose, three models are proposed and applied to analyse the benefit of ES with applications in energy and ancillary service markets, revenue maximisation in the context of Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) and carbon footprint minimization. A large set of studies are carried out to quantify the commercial and carbon benefits of ES for those applications. Sensitivity analysis across various scenarios is performed to understand the key drivers for the value of ES and how it is affected by ES parameters and other factors such as network constraints, prices of energy and ancillary services, and inherent energy system characteristics. A review of current and near-term storage technology costs and functionality is also presented. Keywords

Switching energy demand for transport from liquid fuels to electricity is the most promising way to significantly improve air quality and reduce transport emissions. Previous studies have shown this is possible, that by 2035 the economics of alternative powertrain and energy vectors will have converged. However, they do not address whether the transition is likely or plausible. Using the UK as a case study, we present a systems dynamics model based study informed by transition theory and explore the effects of technology progress, policy-making, user preferences and; for the first time, automated vehicles on this transition. We are not trying to predict the future but to highlight what is necessary in order for different scenarios to become more or less likely. Worryingly we show that current policies with the expected technology progress and expectations of vehicle buyers are insufficient to reach global targets. Faster technology progress, strong financial incentives or a change in vehicle buyer expectations are crucial but still insufficient. In contrast, the biggest switch to alternatively fuelled vehicles could be achieved by the introduction of automated vehicles. The implications will affect policy makers, automotive manufactures, technology developers and broader society.

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