Community-scale hydrogen systems within global energy transitions: Systematic review of empirical case studies

Hydrogen communities are a developing concept in the global energy transition toward sustainable and low-carbon energy systems. Therefore, this work presents an integrated framework that combines a literature review, bibliometric analysis, and a case study assessment by collectively analyzing data from SCOPUS and Web of Science (WoS). This framework enables a comprehensive integrated review combining systematic review, bibliometric analysis, and case-study synthesis of published literature and real-world applications related to hydrogen communities. In this study, 330 relevant articles were selected for bibliometric analysis using SCOPUS and WoS data to explore research trends, key journals, and leading contributors. The bibliometric analysis indicates scientific attention towards hydrogen communities is steadily growing with significant emphasis on hydrogen storage, hydrogen production from renewable energies, hydrogen economy development, and assessment of sustainability impacts. Specifically, China and the USA are in leading positions regarding publications. Sustainability-oriented analyses and case study reviews highlighted that the realization of hydrogen communities heavily depends on coordinated policy frameworks, which should cover technological innovation, economic incentives, environmental safeguards, and social trust. Thus, the overall results confirm that hydrogen possesses multi-vector potential in sustainable transition. This discussion clearly highlights the necessity of inter-sector association to design cost-effective, robust, and eco-friendly hydrogen-based community systems. The model discussed in this study properly integrates all facets of hydrogen communities, namely technology, policies, society, and economy. The knowledge constructed and concepts designed within this research have been developed to encourage further research and facilitate roadmap planning for sustainable hydrogen communities.