Stumbling blocks on the Hydrogen road in Norway

This paper analyses a quite comprehensive Norwegian experiment to provide hydrogen as a fuel for transportation. The programme, called HyNor (short for ‘the Hydrogen road in Norway’), was a Norwegian joint industry initiative to demonstrate a real-life implementation of hydrogen energy infrastructure along a 580 km route between Oslo and Stavanger. The paper analyses the stumbling blocks that could potentially throw the project off balance. Initially the expectation was that non-technological issues, related to hindrances on the one hand and opportunities on the other, would be at the centre of attention when it came to implementing hydrogen in the Norwegian transportation sector. However, issues related to what is described as socio-technical synchronisation were found to be the most challenging to the project.