DNV published a multi-year study for the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) on 12 March, concluding that hydrogen as a ship fuel demands a fundamentally different approach to safety design compared with other alternative fuels.
The study concludes that design-based safety is required for hydrogen-fuelled ships and recommends secondary enclosures across all hydrogen-carrying components, including on open deck. The reasoning is straightforward: even smaller leaks can quickly form ignitable gas clouds, and combined with hydrogen’s low ignition energy and challenges associated with leak detection, this implies the need for additional onboard technical barriers to reduce explosion risks. That is a meaningfully different hazard profile from LNG, where buoyancy and open-air dispersion do more of the safety work.
The study also flags occupational risk. Due to its high flammability and the low storage temperatures of its liquefied form, hydrogen introduces new occupational hazards for seafarers. The report recommends that safety management systems, human factors, and organisational safety culture be treated as a layer of risk control on top of the technical barriers, not as a substitute for them.
The guidance document produced alongside the study is non-mandatory, but the direction of travel for regulators and classification societies is clear. If secondary enclosures across all hydrogen-carrying components become the accepted design expectation, the cost and complexity of hydrogen shipping goes up significantly relative to alternatives like methanol or batteries. Norway has been an active proponent of hydrogen in its ferry sector. This report is worth reading before making assumptions about what that investment will actually require.
SOURCE: DNV, no individual author listed, published 12 March 2026. https://www.dnv.com/news/2026/dnv-study-for-emsa-calls-for-designbased-safety-approach-for-hydrogenfuelled-ships/
