Enhancing trust in global supply chains: Conceptualizing Digital Product Passports for a low-carbon hydrogen market

Industries and energy markets around the world are facing mounting pressure to decarbonize, prompting them to transform processes and supply chains towards sustainability. However, a lack of credible sustainability data proves to be a considerable barrier for emerging markets for sustainable products: Against the background of complex and globalized supply chains, it is necessary to verify the sustainability claim of products in order to demand price premiums for sustainable products in the long run. To enable this, it is necessary that stakeholders in globalized supply chains are willing to share relevant data along the entire supply chain for increasing traceability and reducing information asymmetries. Using the example of international hydrogen supply chains, we study how data can be shared between different stakeholders using Digital Product Passports while addressing stakeholders’ concerns about data privacy and disclosure. In our work, we develop design principles that provide insight into how a Digital Product Passport should be designed to verify the hydrogen’s carbon footprint in a reliable way and to ensure the willingness of stakeholders to share their data. We follow a multi-step approach with a structured literature review followed by expert interviews and qualitative content analysis for a synthesis of design principles. Our research illustrates that a Digital Product Passport must collect data comprehensively and automatically, process it in a decentralized and tamper-proof manner, protect privacy and sovereignty of stakeholders, and ensure interoperability.