The International Energy Agency Hydrogen Implementing Agreement Task on Hydrogen Safety

The International Energy Agency’s Hydrogen Implementing Agreement (www.ieahia.org) initiated a collaborative task on hydrogen safety in 1994, and this has proved to an effective method of pooling expert knowledge to address the most significant problems associated with the barriers to the commercial adoption of hydrogen energy. Presently there are approximately 10 countries participating in the task and it has proven a valuable method of efficiently combining efforts and resources. The task is now in the fifth year of a six year term and will end in October 2010. This paper will describe the scope of the task, the progress made, and plans for future work. There are also a number of other tasks underway, and this paper will give a brief summary of those activities. Because of the nature of the International Energy Agency, which is an international agreement between governments, it is intended that such collaboration will complement other efforts to help build the technology base around which codes and standards can be developed. This paper describes the specific scope and work plan for the collaboration that has been developed to date.