Romania\u27s Participation to the European Assessment Project Titled HyUnder, Multi-Criterial Analyses of Salt Cavern Locations

The scope of the work is to assess the potential, the actors and relevant business cases for large scale storage of renewable electricity by hydrogen underground storage in Romania. This presentation intends to provide a picture of the multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations in Romania. The energy sector is facing with the necessity to store large energy quantities for short to long term in order to adapt to the increasingly intermittent renewable energy. The results of this presentation have originated from an ongoing European assessment project by the name of HyUnder (FCH JU, grant 303417) regarding utilization of salt caverns for hydrogen underground storage. Currently, main uses of salt caverns include storage of hydrocarbons or wastes disposal. Salt caverns have stirred the interest of the scientific community regarding the potential applications in hydrogen economy. Romania has active mines or caverns and others closed, many of them have the potential to be used from hydrogen storage. These facts represent an interested situation in order to initiate studies or assessments of the potential hydrogen underground storage. The salt mines, hydrogen producers, renewable energy sources and research centers with high qualified scientists, represent essentially elements for new type of studies regarding hydrogen economy. In the context of scientific community\u27s efforts from Romania to assert active in the area of hydrogen technologies, this approach can certainly constitutes an attractive example for pan-European cooperation. The work disclaims the technic multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations regarding hydrogen underground storage. The introduction of hydrogen into economy offers the possibility to provide a number of advantages: sustainable development, valorization of local resources and improvement of competitiveness. The opportunities and viabilities of salt cavern locations are analyzed