Climate impact of the development of methane and hydrogen pathways towards 2050 H/F

Position description

Category

Environment and climate science

Contract

Internship

Job title

Climate impact of the development of methane and hydrogen pathways towards 2050 H/F

Subject

Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions at the global scale opens the way to alternative energy carriers, among which two gaseous vectors stand out: methane and hydrogen. A particular attention should be paid to the fact that methane is a potent greenhouse gas about 30 times stronger than CO2 and H2 is also a Short-Lived Climate Forcer about 12 times stronger that CO2 (100-year Global Warming Potential, GWP100-basis). While methane is generally regarded as a transition fuel – lower-carbon than coal or oil at the point of combustion, and able to draw on existing transport and storage infrastructure – the role hydrogen might play over the coming decades remains the subject of active research. The internship aims to assess the climate impact of contrasted deployment trajectories for methane and hydrogen towards 2050, by coupling a prospective energy-system model with a reduced-complexity climate model.

Contract duration (months)

6

Job description

The assessment of the climate impact of differentiated deployment pathways for methane and hydrogen through to 2050 will be based on the use of an energy model and a climate model—two tools that play complementary roles:
– with the global energy-system model KiNESYS, the work will build a set of differentiated long-term deployment scenarios spanning a range of socio-economic settings and energy and environmental policy contexts. The technology-rich representation makes it possible to vary the scale and timing of methane and hydrogen use, the production mix (grey, blue, green), and the associated infrastructure, and to derive consistent emissions trajectories for the carriers and their value chains;
– these trajectories will then be fed into the reduced-complexity climate model ACC2 (LSCE). ACC2 calculates global-mean temperature changes based on emissions for a variety of greenhouse gases – such as CO2 and methane – and related gases that can indirectly affect the climate via chemical reactions – such as pollutants and hydrogen. ACC2 has been used for various policy applications and assessments. It accounts for major processes in the global Earth system, comprising (i) carbon cycle, (ii) atmospheric chemistry, and (iii) physical climate modules. The atmospheric chemistry module is highly parameterized and based on sensitivity analyzes using several Chemistry Transport Models, representing interactions between methane, hydroxyl radical, ozone, and pollutants.
A central methodological step is the consistent representation of methane and hydrogen leakage across the two models, and the integration of hydrogen’s indirect forcing into the climate component. The expected outcome is a differentiated assessment of how a gas economy affects warming, together with an analysis of the sensitivity of the results to leakage rates, to the green / blue / grey production mix, and to the chosen time horizon – elements that are decisive for distinguishing scenarios that deliver a clear climate benefit from those that do not.
Work programme
1. Literature review on the direct and indirect climate impacts of methane and hydrogen and on leakage rates along the value chains;
2. Completion of the KiNESYS database with methane and hydrogen leakage rates;
3. Design of contrasted deployment scenarios with KiNESYS (with I-Tésé team);
4. Estimation of hydrogen impacts on climate using ACC2 and emission metrics (with LSCE team);

5. Impact assessment and sensitivity analysis (all).

Methods / Means

Python, GAMS

Applicant Profile

– Engineering or university student (Master’s / final year);
– Background in energy / environmental economics or in climate science;
– Skills in climate modelling and/or prospective (scenario) modelling; comfort with quantitative work (Python, GAMS, data handling).

Position location

Site

Saclay

Job location

France, Ile-de-France

Location

Saclay

Candidate criteria

Prepared diploma

Bac+5 - Master 2

Recommended training

energy / environmental economics or in climate science

Requester

Position start date

01/09/2026