Future costs of hydrogen: a quantitative review

Frieden, Florian; Leker, Jens

doi:10.1039/d4se00137k

Cited by 18 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…This percentage will be larger if savings due to the use of GSHPs, High Lift HPs and VHTHPs and savings in the transportation (driving electric or on H2) for the commercial and residential sectors, are included. While the current costs of green H2 are estimated to be 3 -7 $/kg with (113), the costs are expected to drop to around $ 1.50/kg by 2030 (110, 111) and possibly drop below $ 1/kg by 2050 (112). With a caloric value of 39.2 kWh/kg, H2 prices of $ 1.50/kg and $ 1/kg correspond to 0.038 and 0.026 kWh/kg.…”

Section: Gdp Savings From Transitioning To Carbon Negative Buildingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Savings and Avoided Costs of Living Carbon Negative

Dert

2024

Preprint

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In order to prevent the biodiversity losses anticipated under business-as-usual (BAU) conditions, and to prevent the associated enormous financial and human losses, the world has to transition to carbon negative economies, where for decades more CO2 will be sequestered than emitted. To abate and possibly reverse global warming, we need to both transition from fossil fuels to renewables (mainly photo voltaic or PV, solar and wind) and remove CO2 from the atmosphere (Direct Air Capture and CO2 Sequestration or DACCS), preferably to levels close to pre-industrial conditions. This means changing the built environment using carbon negative buildings. Renewable energy (RE) is already cheaper than fossil-fuel-based energy, but based on investments needed for electric utilities and due to increased costs (sunk investment in fossil fuel power plants), the price of electricity paid by end users is likely to rise. End users can save on the cost of energy by installing roof PV solar in combination with the use of heat pumps (HP) and electric cars and trucks (E-cars). For the US, savings vary on PV panel orientation, type of HP and car used. For South facing PV panels, using ground source HPs (GSHP) and E-cars, the savings in the levelized costs of energy (LCOE) are 80 percent compared to the combination of using natural gas (NG) for heating, using utility provided electricity and using fossil fuels for transportation. For areas with on average higher prices for electricity, NG and car fuels and lower prices for roof PV solar (the EU) the savings would be larger. Carbon negative building codes are needed to guarantee that all new buildings have good insulation, 100% South facing (or flat) roofs, are fully covered by PV solar and use HPs (preferably GSHPs) for all heating and cooling needs. For existing buildings, codes should require that fossil fuel energy systems are replaced by carbon neutral or negative ones at the end of their economic life. Based on the 20-year economic life cycle of HVAC and hot water systems, this transition can be completed in 20 years. Buildings typically need major renovations about 50 years after construction. At that time roofs can be adapted to be flat or face mostly South. For the US, the total of roof solar electricity produced by all buildings (South PV azimuth) would be equivalent to 2.6 times the electricity sold in the US in 2022. However, due to intermediate and seasonal storage needs, and the H2 needs (replacing NG), the total electricity used for a US H2 based RE economy requires 3.8 – 5.6 times the 2022 consumption, depending on the H2 system efficiencies reached. If all global RE would be generated using PV solar and installed on cropland (using US per capita energy usage), this would cover 39 – 58% of global croplands for an 8-billion population and 49 - 72% for a 10-billion world population. However, agricultural lands are needed to feed the world and installation of solar farms on lands suitable for agriculture is not sustainable since it would lead to deteriorating human conditions. Remaining RE needs can be covered by wind energy (anywhere, including on agricultural lands) and utility scale solar in areas with no agricultural value (deserts) after the IMACS required fraction of the ecoregion is protected for its biodiversity. In 2021 the total US spending on energy was 5.73% of GDP. Using the combination of most cost effective RE and RE using systems (South facing roof PV solar, GSHP and E-cars), this could be reduced to 2.11% % of GDP, saving 3.62% of GDP. This is a conservative number and actual savings could be larger when GSHPs, Very High Temperature HPs and High Lift HPs are applied in the commercial and industrial sectors. These potential savings are larger than the average annual costs of DACCS (0.7 – 1.8% of global GDP) for a return to pre-industrial atmospheric conditions in 40 years. The 3.6% potential GDP savings only result from roof PV solar and not from field mounted utility scale PV solar or wind energy. These savings are not made if electricity users continue to buy the bulk of their power from electric utilities; in the latter case their cost are expected to go up. Based on the average projected costs of DACCS over 25-year, the societal DACCS costs avoided for PV solar systems are larger than their installation cost; 1.1 -1.3 for utility scale PV solar (South facing), 1.8 – 2.0 for E – W facing roof PV solar and 2.4 – 2.7 for South facing roof PV solar. Governments could pay in full for roof PV solar and still create society wide saving of 1.4 -1.7 times the system costs. In order to speed up the rate of roof PV solar installation over the full roof area available, and allow home and other building owners to reap the savings from roof solar systems, net-metering agreements must be extended to apply to “Roof Solar Production & Use Associations”, where association members invest in PV solar on roofs of members and pay no cost to the power distributing utility for the fractions of power sent to and withdrawn from the grid by members. By focusing on laws and regulations that save energy for building owners, investments made towards a RE future are earned back quickly. If not done so, energy costs will become a drag on economies, the transition to a RE future will be slow and cause large biodiversity, financial and human losses that could have been avoided.

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Section: Gdp Savings From Transitioning To Carbon Negative Buildingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Savings and Avoided Costs of Living Carbon Negative

Dert

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Section: Gdp Savings From Transitioning To Carbon Negative Buildingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can We Reverse Global Warming?

Dert

2024

Preprint

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Without mitigation, Climate Change is expected to costs large amounts of money, cause vast amounts of human suffering and death and threatens the survival of countless species. Rising global temperatures alone are expected to cause a drop in GDP of 30 – 70% for many countries with already high temperatures. In combination with other factors (population growth, increasing water stress, coastal flooding, loss of coastal land, increasing forest fires, loss of wildlife areas and insufficient wild-life corridors), Climate Change could lead to a collapse in ecosystem services, estimated at almost twice the global GDP. For humans, these combined factors would increase poverty, famine, starvation and cause mass migration. Under the Paris Accord, countries agreed to limit Climate Change to 1.5 degrees. This limit was not set because it was a “safe” for biodiversity or humanity, but because lower limits were considered “unachievable”. However, a relatively quick reversal of global warming would minimize all damages that would occur over the next centuries under Climate Change. Besides the return to pre-industrial atmospheric conditions, minimizing loss of human lives and minimizing damage to wildlife areas and the biodiversity these represent, this would also allow a gradual restoration of mountain snow and ice caps, restoring melt water flows, reduce water stress and minimize coastal flooding. Governments treat the changes needed to transition to a carbon neutral world as “costs” instead of “investments”. Here I show how the use of renewable energy (especially roof PV solar), ground source heat pumps and electric cars combined with massive application of direct air capture and sequestration of CO2 (DACCS) can reverse global warming in 40 to 60 years while saving massive amounts of money (about 3.62% of GDP). A critical element in doing this is the use of the Impacts Measurement and Conservation System (IMACS) as the business model. The IMAC system puts consumers, retailers and organizations in general in charge of selling and buying incrementally less damaging and more sustainable products and services, while being rewarded for their actions. Under IMACS, current and historic damaging impacts are calculated and assigned to participating products, services and individual labor. For participating sellers, damaging impacts and associated sustainabilities are accurately calculated per product and service per sales location (and daily adjusted) using automated and low costs methods. For non-participating competitor products, the impacts cannot be calculated accurately and are set to the statistic upper damage limit for each damage type for the product group. Sellers who start participation will therefore almost always see large reductions in damaging impacts and large increases in reported sustainabilities for their products and services. This could dramatically accelerate the rate of change towards a sustainable world. Participation in IMACS is voluntary and cost-free for individuals. In order for products to become (more) sustainable, damaging impacts like greenhouse gas emissions must be eliminated or must be offset by CO2 sequestered in permanent storage locations. For the society as a whole, becoming carbon neutral saves large amounts of money compared to not doing so, even when the costs of CO2 sequestration are included. Under IMACS, the purchase of neutralizing amounts of sequestered CO2 are paid for during the product purchase with an electronic voucher provided by the retailer. This only applies to participating products and services sold by participating retailers to participating customers. For a 40-year global warming reversal period, the average DACCS costs for the base and conservative DACCS cost scenarios are respectively 0.65 – 1.78% of GDP, but drop to 0.26 – 0.73% of GDP over 100 years. For carbon neutral sellers, the average DACCS costs (neutralizing historic emissions) are 0.92 – 2.56% of sale, but reach 1.58 – 4.39% of sale for the peak year. The ratio of cumulative energy cost savings over cumulative DACCS costs for a 40-year global warming reversal are 1.6 - 4.4 over the 40-year period and 4.5 – 12.4 over 100-year. Early participating sellers will receive all or most of these savings. Since under IMACS, the saving from carbon neutral operations throughout the supply chain go hand in hand with the DACCS payments for remaining and historical CO2 emissions, the DACCS costs can be paid out of the savings from carbon neutral operations. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the DACCS industry, as needed to reverse global warming, is in line with the currently expected CAGR for the DACCS industry between 2023 and 2032 (42 – 70% on production basis). A 63% growth rate under default model conditions maintained for 26 years would lead to global warming reversal in model year 41. By participating in IMACS, individuals and organizations can eliminate current CO2 emissions, neutralize historic CO2 emissions, save money and improve their competitive position. Becoming sustainable can be simplified from a political to a marketing challenge. IMACS, by assigning the costs of conservation (protection and restoration) to individuals and organizations responsible for the damage done, can effectively address and solve the classic “tragedy of the commons”.

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