Comparing the environmental performances of Water Electrolyzer Technologies through LCA

Semester Project
Life Cycle Assessment
LCA
Green hydrogen technologies
Sustainable Energy

What?

Semester Project

Where?

IPESE Lab, EPFL Valais Campus (Sion, Switzerland), hybrid

When?

Fall Semester 2026/asap

Context

As the world races toward net-zero, green hydrogen is emerging as a critical enabler of the energy transition, but how “green” are the technologies that produce it? This project uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental footprint of today’s and tomorrow’s water electrolysis technologies. The work is carried out within the framework of the NOAH2 and HYPRAEM research initiatives, which bring together academic and industrial partners and aim at developing the next generation of hydrogen electrolyzers. Within this context, the present project contributes by establishing the environmental baselines of key electrolyzer technologies through Life Cycle Assessment, providing the evidence base needed to guide future technology choices and improvements.

Project objectives and tasks

You will:

  • Build an up-to-date life cycle inventory (LCI) by reviewing the latest literature;
  • Develop a harmonized methodology for calculating the LCI across technologies;
  • Establish LCA baselines for four key electrolyzer technologies: SOEC, PEMEL, AEMEL, and AEL
  • Compute the impact profiles
    • to pinpoint the hotspots of impacts, whether in manufacturing, operation, or end-of-life.
    • to benchmark the different technologies head-to-head.
  • Run sensitivity analyses on key parameters to understand what levers matter most for improving environmental performance.

Skills and background

We’re looking for a motivated student who has:

  • Ability to gather, evaluate, and synthesize data
  • Basic familiarity with LCA methodology.

Additional qualifications that would be advantageous:

  • Experience with LCA-Software (Activity Browser or OpenLCA)
  • Background knowledge in hydrogen production.

Supervision and conditions

The project is supervised by:

  • Prof. Manuele Margni, professor at HES-SO Valais Wallis at Energypolis (Sion, Switzerland) and at Polytechnique Montréal (Montréal, Canada).
  • Coaching: David Zenhäusern, LCA analyst at HES_So / CIRAIG

Application: Interested students must send an application file including a CV, a transcript (bachelor and master) and a brief cover letter to David Zenhäusern, Jocelyn Roth and Manuele Margni. The position remains open until a suitable candidate is found.