Role of hydrogen in decarbonizing China's electricity and hard-to-abate sectors

TL;DR

This study models China's energy system to show that green hydrogen can significantly reduce costs and improve decarbonization efforts, especially when integrated across sectors and supported by storage and transmission infrastructure.

Contribution

It uniquely couples electricity and hard-to-abate sectors in a comprehensive model, revealing cost benefits of integrated green hydrogen infrastructure in China.

Findings

Green hydrogen reduces zero-carbon electricity costs by 17%.

Coupled hydrogen infrastructure lowers overall energy costs.

Green hydrogen becomes competitive with fossil-based hydrogen.

Abstract

Green hydrogen has the potential to address two pressing problems in a zero-carbon energy system: balancing seasonal variability of solar and wind in the electricity sector, and replacing fossil fuels in hard-to-abate sectors. However, the previous research only separately modeled the electricity and hard-to-abate sectors, which is unable to capture how the interaction between the two sectors influences the energy system cost. In this study, focusing on China, we deploy an electricity system planning model to examine the cost implications of green hydrogen to fully decarbonize the electricity system and hard-to-abate sectors. Our results reveal that green hydrogen enables a 17% reduction in the levelized cost of a zero-carbon electricity system relative to that without hydrogen. However, cost savings hinge on the availability of underground hydrogen storage capacities and electric transmission expansion. More importantly, coupling hydrogen infrastructure in the electricity and hard-to-abate sectors not only reduces energy costs compared to a decoupled energy system but also makes green hydrogen cost-competitive compared to fossil fuel-based gray and blue hydrogen in China.