A systematic review of life cycle assessment of hydrogen for road transport use

Abstract

This study conducted a systematic literature review of the technical aspects and methodological choices in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of the use of hydrogen for road transport. More than 70 scientific papers published during 2000–2021 were reviewed, in which more than 350 case studies of the use of hydrogen in the automotive sector were found. Only some studies used hybrid LCA and energetic input–output LCA, whereas most studies addressed attributional process-based LCA. A categorization based on the life cycle scope distinguished case studies that addressed the well-to-tank (WTT), well-to-wheel (WTW), and complete life cycle approaches. Furthermore, based on the hydrogen production process, these case studies were classified into four categories: thermochemical, electrochemical, thermal–electrochemical, and biochemical. Moreover, based on the hydrogen production site, the case studies were classified as centralized, on-site, and on-board. The fuel cell vehicle passenger car was the most commonly used vehicle. The functional unit for the WTT studies was mostly mass or energy, and vehicle distance for the WTW and complete life cycle studies. Global warming potential (GWP) and energy consumption were the most influential categories. Apart from the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for assessment of the GWP, the Centrum voor Milieukunde Leiden method was most widely used in other impact categories. Most of the articles under review were comparative LCA studies on different hydrogen pathways and powertrains. The findings provide baseline data not only for large-scale applications, but also for improving the efficiency of hydrogen use in road transport.

Life-cycle assessment of hydrogen utilization in power generation: A systematic review of technological and methodological choices

“…The initial search generated 400 articles, which included 179 articles from Scopus and 221 publications from the WOS. The selection of articles comprising the systematic review followed several stages, which were conducted according to the method used by Rinawati et al (2022), as shown in Figure 1. Firstly, the raw data were filtered, considering only papers published in journals (four publications of non-peer-reviewed journal articles were excluded).…”

“…The most important information about the methodological choices and technical aspects of the selected hydrogen-based power generation LCA studies was extracted using a modified coding scheme (Muench and Guenther, 2013;Rinawati et al, 2022), as shown in the Supplementary material. We identified a case study or scenario for each variation in technological aspects such as hydrogen production method, feedstock, primary energy source, hydrogen storage, power conversion technology, and geographical scope.…”

“…Koj et al (2019) performed a review of 32 LCA studies on Power-to-X, where fuels and final use for transport applications were discussed most frequently instead of hydrogen for power generation purposes. Rinawati et al (2022) placed a stronger emphasis on hydrogen for mobility use LCAs. These studies succeeded in identifying the relevant methodological trends.…”

An Overview of Promising Alternative Fuels for Road, Rail, Air, and Inland Waterway Transport in Germany

“…Of the promising alternative fuels considered, hydrogen production has been subject to the most environmental analysis. For example, a recent review study of the ecological effects of using hydrogen as a fuel for road transport was able to identify 72 relevant studies featuring WtT or LCA results [184]. In that literature review, a range of GWP values for WtT studies and the reference MJ could be identified.…”

“…With regard to different life cycle stages, the plant construction (electrolysis, carbon capture, and methanation plant) shows lower global warming potential contributions than the contributions related to plant operation [184,185].…”