Sustainability of hydrogen supply chain. Part I: Identification of critical criteria and cause–effect analysis for enhancing the sustainability using DEMATEL

• Critical criteria for the sustainability of hydrogen supply chain are identified.
• The importance of the criteria can be prioritized.
• The cause–effect relationship diagrams are mapped for enhancing the sustainability.
• This method allows multi-actors to participate in the analysis process.
• Effective actions are drafted for enhancing the sustainability of supply chain.

The enhancement of sustainability of hydrogen supply chain is of vital importance for the stakeholders/decision-makers to design a sustainable hydrogen supply chain. The objective of this paper is to develop a method for prioritizing the influential factors, identifying the key driving factors that influence the sustainability of hydrogen supply chain and mapping the cause–effect relationships to improve the sustainability of hydrogen supply chain. In this paper, thirty seven criteria in four aspects including economic, technological, environmental and societal aspects are considered for enhancing the sustainability of hydrogen supply chain, and decision making trial and evaluation laboratory has been used to analyze the relationships among these criteria. The status of hydrogen supply chain in China has been studied by the proposed method, and the results are consistent with the actual conditions. It could be concluded that the proposed method is feasible and could be popularized to some other cases.

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