Integrating regional energy hubs with hydrogen: Pathways to understand and reduce decision-making uncertainties in the Netherlands

Abstract

Hydrogen integration at Dutch regional energy hubs appears to stall not because of technology but because no institutional arrangement adequately governs the conditions under which projects may operate on financeable terms. Grid access is the binding constraint: investment depends on how many hours a connection permits operation, what curtailment costs, and whether those hours coincide with renewable generation eligibility. At Cluster 6 nodes, outside reinforcement priority plans and lacking near-term access certainty, these interdependencies remain unresolved. This paper identifies five decision uncertainties arising at the boundaries between potential hub developers and network operators, across four coordination requirements: siting, access portfolio construction, curtailment and settlement design, and hub governance in Cluster 6-type contexts. In response, four coordination strategies are identified using existing Dutch regulatory instruments and configured into two lifecycle-sequenced integration pathways matched to observable hub conditions. The analysis indicates that no single instrument, on its own, is likely to secure the institutional conditions associated with financeability; rather, those conditions depend on how instruments are combined across the wider coordination arrangement.