Correlation between national development indicators and the implementation of a hydrogen economy in Slovenia

The aim of the study was to identify fields where Slovenia needs to improve in order to be able to implement hydrogen economy. For this purpose the methodology of a time “snapshot” (year 2008) was used to show a degree of early market penetration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in mobile and stationary applications in comparison with nine developed countries. The socioeconomic development indicators were used to characterize these countries and to find the correlations, if they exist, with the penetration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Results of statistical analysis have revealed that Slovenia is positioned rather well among the analysed countries with regard to the development indicators at higher hierarchical levels. However, two crucial indicators that correlate very strongly with the penetration of hydrogen and fuel cells technologies in studied nine developed countries – the number of researcher per one thousand of employees and the number of granted patents per one million population – are rather low for Slovenia.