Key Policy Enablers For The Implementation Of G20’s High Level Voluntary Principles On Hydrogen

2023’s G20 saw leaders agree to High Level Voluntary Principles on Hydrogen in order to build a sustainable and equitable global hydrogen ecosystem that benefits all member states (G20, 2023). We seek to address the implementation of these principles through policy actions in relation to TFO2 and the upcoming G20 Summit in Brazil-based on broad-consensus from a wide array of stakeholders who endorsed the Joint-Agreement on the Responsible Deployment ofRenewables-Based Hydrogen at COP28 (Willis, 2024) Projections indicate the hydrogen sector could represent a $1.4 trillion (USD) market by 2050, with a large share of proposed projects in G20 countries. Hydrogen represents both an enormous opportunity to address the wealth disparity in the global energy system (accelerating the democratic and transparent redistribution of benefits) while also introducing significant socioeconomic and environmental risks based on a range of production and consumption-related issues and their contribution to a just energy transition. Specifically, those issues are identified as follows: Reverse localisation of energy production and consumption (exports to secondary markets which increase overall GHG emissions in the global economy), cross-border carbon adjustment trade-related mechanisms which do not provide sufficient safeguards to developing economies, and the continued extraction of natural resources from the Global South which set us on a path for ecological overshoot by 2045 (Merz et al, 2023) This document will set forth a means of implementation of the aforementioned principles through the following critical, interrelated lines of policy action (hereinafter referred to as ‘the policy recommendations’): 1. Create incentives for developing economies to produce downstream products for local offtake in alignment with the Joint-Agreement 2. Develop standardised, mitigation-based revenue streams through onshoring of Emissions Trading Systems for hydrogen or derivative exports to safeguard against the socioeconomic impacts of CBAM or other trade related mechanisms focused on carbon leakage in the Global North 3. Coordinate (subsidised) co-investment in the Bioeconomy to ensure new hydrogen-related industrialisation supports the commoditisation of those nature-based solutions deemed essential to deliver on a 1.5°C future 4. Achieve energy independence of developing countries through the timely deployment of multilateral climate funds in accordance with SDG7 (Yinuo, 2023).