ANSI Report Charts the Path from Hydrogen Standards to Safe, Large-Scale Deployment

Stakeholders call for a roadmap, training, and stronger coordination; companion landscape maps standards across the hydrogen value chain

NEW YORK, Oct. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A robust portfolio of the standards needed to deploy hydrogen safely at scale are already in place. Continued success depends on helping the people who design, permit, inspect, and operate hydrogen systems find and apply them, according to a new report from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The report, "Advancing Hydrogen Standards and Codes," summarizes ANSI's June 2026 hydrogen standards workshop. ANSI has also released the Hydrogen Standards Landscape, a companion document that maps existing hydrogen standards across the value chain.

Hydrogen is essential to petroleum refining, fertilizer and chemical production, and metal processing. It also offers a path to cleaner transportation and power through fuel cells, and to large-scale storage of renewable energy. Standards help these applications scale safely, reliably, and efficiently—benefitting U.S. competitiveness, energy security, and public safety.

After reviewing these resources, stakeholders are encouraged to tell ANSI what priorities should be next.

Inside the Report

Held June 22–23, 2026, in Washington, DC, the workshop was the latest activity of ANSI's Hydrogen Standards Coordination Initiative, which works to advance the development and awareness of safety and technical standards across the full hydrogen value chain. Participants came from industry, government, standards development organizations (SDOs), conformity assessment bodies, research institutions, and end-user communities. Stakeholders consistently noted that barriers to deployment are often not the result of missing standards, but of challenges in implementing, adopting, and applying existing requirements.

The report outlines four primary implementation challenges:

• Limited familiarity with requirements. Authorities having jurisdiction (the local officials who approve and inspect projects), inspectors, emergency responders, and permitting officials may have limited exposure to hydrogen technologies and associated consensus standards. Participants viewed direct engagement, implementation guidance, and standards education and training as important steps toward more consistency and less uncertainty in deployment.
• Workforce readiness. Participants cautioned that hydrogen deployment could outpace the supply of qualified personnel if workforce development doesn't keep up.
• Operational experience and data. Participants emphasized sharing reliability, performance, safety, and deployment data as critical to informing standards, conformity assessment, permitting decisions, and the validation of emerging technologies. They added that research and lessons learned from deployments should inform future standards work.
• Coordination and alignment. Stakeholders called for better visibility into ongoing standards work, less fragmentation, stronger information-sharing, and better harmonization among standards developers, regulators, industry sectors, and international activities.

Looking Ahead

Participants generally favored building on existing standards and technical knowledge rather than creating entirely new frameworks. A hydrogen standards roadmap for storage and infrastructure received particularly strong support as a way to organize priorities, identify standards and research gaps, and coordinate work across the hydrogen ecosystem as these areas are critical to supporting all end-use applications. Participants also called for better standards navigation tools, expanded educational resources, and greater awareness of existing standards and certification pathways.

"The hydrogen community has already done much of the hard work of building standards. Now the job is making sure the people who design, permit, inspect, and operate hydrogen systems can find them, understand them, and apply them with confidence," said Christine Bernat, director of standards facilitation at ANSI. "This report and landscape are just the beginning; we need to keep the momentum and we invite stakeholders to influence how we turn these priorities into progress."

Companion Landscape Document

The Hydrogen Standards Landscape brings awareness to over 500 published standards, efforts underway at SDOs, and related guidance and regulatory documents. It covers the full hydrogen value chain, including production, storage, carbon capture, transportation, utilization, and related infrastructure. ANSI plans to migrate the landscape into an online database and periodically update the landscape as standards work continues and is reported to ANSI. Companions to the landscape are the March 2026 webinars, which offer stakeholders in-depth snapshots of several SDO portfolios.

ANSI thanks the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for hosting the workshop, and the project's sponsors for funding support and technical assistance: Diamond Sponsors ASME, ASTM International, the Compressed Gas Association (CGA), and CSA Group; and Gold Sponsors the International Code Council (ICC), the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP), and SAE International.

About ANSI

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance both the global competitiveness of U.S. business and the U.S. quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems, and safeguarding their integrity. Its membership includes businesses, professional societies and trade associations, standards developers, government agencies, and consumer and labor organizations.

The Institute represents and serves the diverse interests of more than 270,000 companies and organizations and 30 million professionals worldwide. ANSI is the official U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and, via the U.S. National Committee, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). For more information, visit www.ansi.org and access the latest news and content on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

SOURCE American National Standards Institute