Whereas hydrogen infrastructure is expected to develop as national infrastructure, the role of regional and local authorities in the creation and development of a hydrogen economy should not be underestimated for three reasons. First, they can bring parties together and position the specific region as hydrogen hotspot. Second, they can create local demand through the public procurement of public transport services and/or maintenance vehicles, also in areas where there is no industrial demand for hydrogen (yet). Third, local and regional authorities can also play a role in system integration. This chapter investigates the role of regional and local authorities in creating and developing a hydrogen market and the limits thereof, using a comparative approach between two ‘hydrogen regions’, Groningen and Puglia (Apulia). Although Puglia adopted a formal legal instrument and Groningen rather depends on policy instruments, both regions have similar policy objectives and means, and both regions struggle with a lack of national legislation on hydrogen.

This chapter advanced the analytical framework of the book, which revolves around the role of the state in governing large-scale decarbonization through collaborative climate governance with interactions of non-state and sub-state actors, networks and multi-stakeholder partnerships in the various governance relations. We provide a coherent framework rooted in theoretical and conceptual debates on the multitude of relations between the state and non-state actors in the governance of climate change. By connecting these governance relations to three evaluative themes of the politics of decarbonization (justice, effectiveness, and legitimacy), we theorize how the state shapes decarbonization processes in a landscape of non-state and sub-state climate action. The chapter situates the book’s contributions to the wider scholarship and highlights the theoretical debates that the empirical chapters will revisit.

While energy production (the energy sector) has undergone huge efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transportation and heating are next to be tackle. Hydrogen could be a solution for one of them, the heating sector. This chapter focuses on the Netherlands as a case study to investigate the (absent) legal framework and the regulatory challenges that the development and deployment of hydrogen in the heating markets face. After an overview of the EU regulatory framework, it delves into the specificities of Dutch legislation. The Netherlands is a suitable object of study because it has instituted concrete initiatives from which the energy supervisor, the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), has created a temporary framework. The analysis reveals significant gaps and inconsistencies in the regulatory landscape and offers concrete suggestions for sector-specific regulation. In addition, the chapter discusses the implications of the regulatory framework for market participants and their behaviour, as well as the role of competition law and potential sector-specific rules in ensuring a level playing field for all market actors. The Dutch experience could potentially generate a model that other EU Member States could follow.

This chapter returns to some central questions about value and valuing, including questions of intrinsic value and the distinction between values and preferences. It argues for value pluralism and discusses specifically prudential values, cultural values, aesthetic values, and natural values. Prudential values are those that relate to an agent’s own interests; cultural values are those that take artifacts or expressions as their objects; aesthetic values include beauty, but also other features such as the sublime; natural values are those that arise from nature’s autonomy. These and other values can conflict. Resources are available for resolving or reducing some value conflicts, but others are at least in practice unresolvable.

The chapter provides an introduction to the book and outlines the key aspects of the interplay between hydrogen and the law. After detailing the relevant technical aspects of hydrogen it engages with the existing literature on hydrogen and the law and situates this handbook in the wider debate. The literature review is clustered along the hydrogen value chain from production, via transmission and distribution to end use. The chapter concludes by highlighting the important role of clear regulatory frameworks for the hydrogen transition.

This chapter analyzes the regional and sectoral differences in how cities and municipalities engage in climate change networks. Over the past 20 years, an increasing number of cities, regions, companies, investors, and other non-state and subnational actors have voluntarily committed to reducing their GHG emissions. Such actions could help reduce the implementation gap. Along with the increase in commitments and the growing number of venues through which non-state actors can cooperate in order to govern climate change, it is necessary to track and evaluate such efforts. This chapter assesses the voluntary commitments made by Swedish municipalities, regions and multistakeholder partnerships to decarbonize by reducing GHG emissions. It finds large differences in which cities and municipalities that engage in networks. Large and urban municipalities in the south and along the eastern coast are well represented, whereas more rural municipalities along the Norwegian border are less represented in the data. The findings are discussed in terms of climate justice, highlighting the importance of having everyone onboard to create acceptance and reduce inequality in the transformation toward decarbonization.

Moral philosophy can be divided into two major fields: metaethics, which concerns the meaning and status of moral language, and normative ethics, which centers on what we ought to do. An ancient controversy in metaethics is that between moral realism, the view that moral language states facts about the world, and moral subjectivism, the view that moral language expresses the attitudes of speakers. Moral language seems to have both the characteristics of fact-stating discourse as well as some of the characteristics of expressions of attitudes. The challenge of metaethics is to reconcile the object-relatedness of realism with the motivational insight of subjectivism. Such a view must hold that valuing is contextual, object-directed, and constrained by biology, psychology, and history. Such a view is demonstrated through an investigation of the concept of intrinsic value.

How we should treat nonhuman animals is one of the most important environmental questions that we face. Although most people think of humans as having a qualitatively different moral status than nonhuman animals, there is no morally significant criterion for membership in the moral community that is satisfied by all and only humans. If the criterion is demanding enough (e.g., language), it excludes some humans; if it is permissive enough to include all humans (e.g., sentience), it includes some nonhumans. The discovery that “speciesism” is indefensible opens the door to a range of strong animal-protection philosophies – for example, Peter Singer’s “animal liberation,” which is founded on utilitarianism, and Christine Korsgaard’s “fellow creatures” view, which has a Kantian foundation. These views converge in concluding that many of the ways that we treat animals are wrong.

This chapter examines whether the legal and regulatory framework in France for the transport of energy is fit for hydrogen purposes and designed to accommodate that new energy carrier. Specifically, the aim of the analysis is to determine whether the French regulator chose the rules- or goal-setting approach when setting the framework for the transport of hydrogen. From early on, France attributed a prominent role to hydrogen for achieving its energy and climate goals and the decarbonization of its energy system, particularly transport and industry. This is demonstrated by the plethora of pilot power-to-gas projects across continental France, pushing the limits and exploring different synergies between hydrogen, gas and renewable energy sources. French gas infrastructure operators have already carried out extensive work to explore possibilities for integrating a significant amount of hydrogen into the gas mix by 2050, with limited infrastructure adaptation costs, deploying coordinated use of solutions including blending, methanation and even the option of 100 per cent hydrogen. Until recently, the legal and regulatory framework was lagging behind, as essential provisions that could facilitate hydrogen in the French gas transport infrastructure were missing. This, however, changed recently with the adoption of a specific chapter in the French energy code that also includes provisions on the transport of renewable hydrogen in natural gas pipelines and autonomous transport networks. This chapter, based on the analysis of these recent developments, assesses the type of regulatory approach followed by France regarding transport of hydrogen regulation and why this approach changes based on the regulatory subject. The flexibility and adaptability that characterise France’s decision on the regulatory approach to be used each time could prove valuable in other jurisdictions and could, despite some shortcomings, serve as a key tool for the design of reasonable legal frameworks for hydrogen transportation.