Can Industrial-Scale Solar Hydrogen Supplied from Commodity Technologies Be Cost Competitive by 2030?

On the climate impacts of blue hydrogen production

“…In this context, supplying electrolysis entirely with renewable wind and solar power without connection to the power grid requires installation of electricity storage (e.g. batteries) to cope with short-term intermittency of renewable generation, 62 which increases climate impacts of hydrogen from an LCA perspective. This increase has been quantified to be in the order of 10% for a given system configuration as investigated by Palmer et al 12 However, since this is sitespecific and depends on the configuration of the electrolysis system, we do not consider such aspects here.…”

Sector coupling via hydrogen to lower the cost of energy system decarbonization

“…Recent renewed interest in H 2 has been partially intrigued by expectations of a future VRE-dominant electric grid and cost declines for water electrolyzers 4 , both of which raise the prospect of electrolytic H 2 becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuel-based pathways, e.g., natural gas reforming 5,6 . Besides the economics of electrolytic H 2 production 7,8 , many studies have focused on evaluating the economics of H 2 -based energy storage (power-togas-to-power, P2G2P), which relies on electrolysis for H 2 production, under deep decarbonization scenarios.…”

On the climate impacts of blue hydrogen production

“…In this context, supplying electrolysis entirely with renewable wind and solar power without connection to the power grid requires installation of electricity storage (e.g. batteries) to cope with short-term intermittency of renewable generation, 61 which increases climate impacts of hydrogen from an LCA perspective. This increase has been quantified to be in the order of 10% for a given system configuration as investigated by Palmer et al 10 However, since this is sitespecific and depends on the configuration of the electrolysis system, we do not consider such aspects here.…”