A little over six months after the launch of the JustH2Transit project, researchers felt the need to hear about each other's research progress more frequently and earlier than through newly published scientific articles. This led to the concept of Rising Stars meetings: regular one-hour Teams meetings during which two (often young) researchers present the status of their research and other researchers in the project can ask questions related to it.

The event helps researchers test the formulation of their presentations and messages and provides an opportunity to practice before upcoming conferences, for example. However, the main goal is to improve the flow of information within the project so that researchers from different organizations who are working on several different projects at the same time can stay up to date with the work being done in the JustH2Transit project. This enables them to direct their research efforts in ways that benefit the project as a whole as much as possible.

The Rising Stars meetings have so far covered topics such as the calculation of life cycle emissions related to the hydrogen value chain, frequently asked questions about hydrogen production, storage, and transport, test results obtained from the behaviour of materials in high-temperature environments containing ammonia, the results of company interviews, and a theoretical justice framework that can be used to address issues related to the fairness of the hydrogen transition.

Next up are presentations on topics such as biological hydrogen production routes and bottlenecks in hydrogen use.

A good example of the usefulness of such cross-pollination is the willingness to collaborate that has emerged among scenario researchers and life cycle assessors that have been working separately in their own fields. The five socio-technical scenarios produced in the project, originally intended as qualitative material, are now on the desks of life cycle assessors for quantitative review.

Making all assumptions transparent and translating them into meaningful units and justified quantities requires careful consideration, but it also generates extremely valuable discussion within the project about the conclusions to be drawn. Based on the initial results, combining the different approaches will change the currently prevailing views on what each development path would mean for Finland.

In other words: the Rising Stars -concept promises scientific results – new knowledge that did not exist when the project application was submitted.