A new study led by researchers at LUT University maps where and how to deploy hydrogen across Finland’s hardest-to-electrify sectors, including steel, shipping, aviation, heavy-duty trucks, chemical production, and oil refining. Rather than examining one sector in isolation, the team built a system-level life cycle assessment (LCA) covering the full hydrogen value chain, from production to end use, and tested four transition scenarios against a fossil baseline.

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Published in the Energy Conversion and Management Journal, the research goes beyond the usual focus on carbon alone. It assesses five environmental impact categories, including climate change, acidification, fine particulate matter, marine eutrophication, and ozone depletion, so that cutting emissions in one area does not quietly create a new burden elsewhere. The study also introduces two novel deployment priority indices (DPIs) that turn these multi-impact results into clear, decision-ready guidance on where scarce hydrogen should go first.

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Key Findings:

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• 100% wind-powered electrolysis hydrogen delivers the strongest overall performance, cutting climate impact in the studied hard-to-electrify sectors by 80% (from 30.8 to 6.2 Mt CO2-eq per year) and reducing other environmental impacts by 47 to 76%.

• Steel stands out as a “no-regret” priority, combining large absolute cuts with an intrinsically clean switch from coal-based routes to hydrogen-based steelmaking.

• Shipping offers the largest absolute gains through e-methanol, though it needs extra measures for residual nitrogen oxides and particulate emissions.

• Ammonia and refinery hydrogen are strong early-demonstration candidates, as their transitions are among the cleanest per unit of hydrogen.

• Methanol for chemical use should be deprioritised for now, until upstream production efficiency improves.

• The study flags a real trade-off worth watching, as marine eutrophication can rise in renewable scenarios because of upstream emissions from biomass and renewable infrastructure.

• Capturing electrolysis waste heat for district heating could save a further 4.2 Mt CO2-eq per year while meeting 19% of Finland’s district heating demand.

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The findings give policymakers, investors, and grid operators a transparent, evidence-based way to rank sectors for hydrogen deployment under tight supply, moving past earlier qualitative “hydrogen ladder” approaches. The framework is also fully transferable, so it can be applied to other countries by updating their local energy mix and reference data.

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This research was supported by the JustH2Transit project, funded by the Strategic Research Council within the Research Council of Finland (decisions 358422 and 358961).

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Read the full open-access article:​ Arshad, N., Patel, G. H., Laasonen, E., Horttanainen, M., & Havukainen, J. (2026). Prioritizing hydrogen deployment across hard-to-electrify sectors based on system-level environmental performance. Energy Conversion and Management, 369, 122061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2026.122061