Willmer Guevara Ramírez1, Rosa-María Río-Belver1 and Itziar Martínez de Alegría1
Willmer Guevara Ramírez1, Rosa-María Río-Belver1 and Itziar Martínez de Alegría1
1 University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Faculty of Engineering in Vitoria-Gasteiz Industrial Organization and Management Engineering Department C/ Nieves Cano 12, 01007 Vitoria, Spain.
Keywords: Sustainable hydrogen, Renewable hydrogen, Photovoltaic electricity potential, Bibliometric.
1. Introduction
Green hydrogen production can come from different renewable energy sources, the literature describes solar energy as one of the most promising due to the wide availability of this natural resource [1], [2]. This has resulted in the name of solar hydrogen and which has focused the attention of many researchers, organizations, and countries, resulting in the generation of important knowledge that can contribute to the rapid massification of these technologies.
In this context, the objective of this research is to map the research trends related to green-solar hydrogen, through a bibliometric analysis of the publications indexed in SCOPUS, identifying the most mature and emerging topics, as well as the authors keys and their level of collaboration. In addition, the relationship between the potential of photovoltaic electricity and the volume of research documents related to green-solar hydrogen is analyzed, which also correlates with the solar electricity generation capacity of the leading countries.
2. Methodology
The research used the SCOPUS database to index a greater number of documents of high scientific rigor. The exploration carried out covered terms that characterize the trend of solar hydrogen production, such as clean, sustainable, renewable, and green. We searched for keywords as exact phrases and resulted in 1305 documents up to the year 2020.
Key indicators such as the number of citations, the number of documents and the citations per document were used in the analysis [3]. The co-authorship maps at the different levels of authorship, and the co-occurrence of keywords, were constructed using VOSviewer, which is a software that has gained relevance within the framework of bibliometric studies [3]–[5].
At the same time, the correlation between the scientific production of the leading countries in the green hydrogen-solar and their production of solar electric energy is analyzed [6].
3. Results
Publications related to the concept of green hydrogen date back to 1982, with a discrete record until 2004, when it began to grow exponentially until the present. Scientific production on the concept of green hydrogen has been led by China and the USA, with more than 215 papers and 100 collaborations with other countries. Germany, Italy, India, Spain, United Kingdom and Japan are also notable for their productivity and networking. The latter, despite significant output, has only collaborated on 29 occasions. There is also a more discreet participation of certain countries from less developed regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Only the United States is am