**2. Materials and Methods**

The documentation for carrying out the study is based on the specialized scientific literature, articles in journals, papers presented at conferences on the hydrogen applcation topic and on-line scientific databases and web pages, including Google Academic, Google Scholar, MDPI, Science Direct, Scopus and research platforms or topic-specific web pages. In addition, this paper utilizes and analyzes a large number of reports, informations regarding the hydrogen & fuel cell strategic research agenda and documents published by the European Union (EU), the United Nations Organization (ONU), the International Energy Agency (IEA) [19–21] and other important dates from research and development institutions that are relevant to hydrogen economy, including E4Tech [22,23], International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE) [24], National Research and Development Institute for Cryogenic and Isotopic Technologies (ICSI) Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania.

The instrument used in this paper in order to verify and analyze the overall position with respect to general acceptance status regarding the harnessing energy potential of hydrogen technology and its use as an alternative energy source for stationary applications is the SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis provides an overview of the characteristics specific to the objective/domain of analysis and the environment in which it will be implemented. The SWOT analysis functions as an x-ray of the concept of hydrogen energy implementation in stationary applications and at the same time evaluates the internal and external influence factors of the concept, as well as its position in the applicability environment in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the concept, in relation to the opportunities and threats existing at the moment [25].

The steps to perform the SWOT analysis are shown schematically in the diagram in Figure 1 in order to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats characteristics of the concept of hydrogen energy for stationary applications.

**Figure 1.** The SWOT process.

As a rule, SWOT analysis allows investigators to improve the performance of current strategies by using new opportunities or by neutralizing potential threats [25]. Therefore, this analysis could be useful in helping decision makers and stakeholders to have a better overview of the concept of hydrogen energy used in stationary applications, facilitating the improvement of the current situation. As a result, SWOT analysis can be considered as an appropriate instrument for this research with scope to identify significant elements and advantages regarding the use of hydrogen energy in stationary applications, research/implementation/solutions/market status and possible changes, challenges, perspectives and improvements.

In order to perform the proposed SWOT analysis, the development in the form of the schematic matrix illustrated in Figure 2, the following stages were required:



**Figure 2.** SWOT analysis matrix [25].

## **3. Considerations Regarding Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology**
