An updated overview of Canada's hydrogen related research and development activities

Finding nature-friendly replacements for fossil-fuels based energy sources are considered vital, and such a task becomes critical for sustainable development. In this regard, hydrogen carries a significant weight potentially and becomes an essential driver in transitioning the economic sectors to carbon-free ones. While the world experiences this kind of transition with hydrogen, Canada appears to be among top ten countries conducting research, development and innovation activities extensively on hydrogen and intending to make hydrogen a key player in their green energy transition. In this study, the contributions of Canadian academic institutions, research centers and other organizations to hydrogen-related research, development and innovation activities over the last fifty years are studied and evaluated comparatively. A comprehensive literature search is conducted to identify the number of hydrogen-related research articles, books, dissertations, patents and funded projects affiliated with Canadian institutes. The findings are presented graphically and discussed from various perspectives. The conducted literature search results show that Canadian institutes have contributed to hydrogen research with a total of 112,454 scholarly publications from 1971 to 2021. During period, the number of hydrogen-related academic articles and books has become 108,437 and 2995, respectively. In the subject area of energy, the relatively young Canadian institution, Ontario Tech University, has contributed the highest to hydrogen research in Canada by producing about 11% of academic articles and about 27% of books, book chapters, and editorials in the subject matter field of hydrogen research and development activities.