The Technical and Economic Potential of the H2@Scale Hydrogen Concept within the United States

Abstract

Department of Energy (DOE) reports produced after 1991 and a growing number of pre-1991 documents are available free via www.OSTI.gov.

Quantifying the challenge of reaching a 100% renewable energy power system for the United States

“…The RE-CT technology was a RE-fueled combustion turbine. It was based on commercial gas turbines that are fired with renewable fuels, 52,53 and it was assumed to have the same heat rate and operation and maintenance (O&M) cost as regular gas-fired combustion turbines, but with a 20% higher overnight capital cost (slightly higher than the 10% value reported by Ruth et al 53 in order to allow the RE-CT to be clutched and act as a synchronous generator). Fuel costs were assumed to be $20/MMBtu, which is consistent with costs for hydrogen produced using an electrolyzer powered by dedicated wind or PV (Mahone et al 54 report a range of $7-35/MMBtu), and falls within the range of current ethanol ($12/MMBtu) and biodiesel ($30/MMBtu) prices.…”

The Potential for Electrons to Molecules Using Solar Energy

“…Today, most hydrogen is produced by steam methane reforming of natural gas, as it offers the most economic means of producing hydrogen at large scales. Steam methane reforming is a catalytic process that converts natural gas and steam to CO2 and hydrogen (Ruth et al 2020). Centrally produced hydrogen could be integrated into existing downstream infrastructure for transportation and storage.…”

“…Significant market opportunities exist for hydrogen in both existing and emerging market applications. Existing applications, including oil refining and ammonia production comprise about 10 million tonnes per year (t/yr) of on-purpose hydrogen production (Ruth et al 2020).…”

“…Expanding demand to emerging markets such as fuel cell electric vehicles, energy storage, and synthetic hydrocarbons has the potential to increase potential U.S. demand to over 100 million t/yr (Ruth et al 2020).…”

“…For the Optimistic scenario, we use a hydrogen market size of 58 million t/yr. This estimate is adapted from a recent H2@Scale economic analysis (Ruth et al 2020) where the hydrogen demand for the lowest-cost electrolysis scenario is 41 million t/yr (see the appendix). The baseline involves specific assumptions on the adoption of hydrogen and electric vehicles and industry.…”