PROSPECTIVE LCA ON MOBILE RENEWABLE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION IN THE NETHERLANDS

Abstract

The global decarbonization of the economies has increased the interest in hydrogen as an energy carrier. The Royal Netherland Navy (RNLN) plans to create energy hubs with own production of mobile renewable hydrogen using water electrolysis with the possibility to scale up to 1 MW capacity in the future. Solar and wind energies are suitable renewable power sources for mobile hydrogen production due to their advantages to be deployed remotely. Nevertheless, these types of electrolysis are still at a pilot scale and the full range of environmental consequences of hydrogen production is unclear. For assessing these technologies and their future environmental impacts the prospective life cycle assessment (pLCA) method is applied. The results of the comparison between pilot LCA’s showed that alkaline water electrolysis has lower environmental impacts than proton exchange membrane water electrolysis. This study provides insights that hydrogen production up to 1 MW can be considered mobile (containerized), the energy supply required for this production capacity has challenges. Therefore, electricity supply scenarios for the 2030-2050 based on energy sources were considered to assess the potential environmental impacts of hydrogen production in the Netherlands. The pLCA applied for alkaline water electrolysis showed that within the three scenarios hydrogen production in 2050 with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies is the environmentally most favorable with respect to climate change impact category (1.22 kg CO2 eq. per kg H2) while the production of renewable hydrogen using solar and wind energy resulted in higher GHG emissions (2.69 kg CO2 eq. per kg H2). However, infrastructure development, as well as higher energy and material demand for applying CCS technology could result in increase in other impact categories. The main contributor to the environmental impacts for renewable hydrogen production is expansion of solar PV, which is necessary to meet the significant electricity demand. The choice between the mobility of the renewable hydrogen production and upscaling of the hydrogen production would depend on the priorities and specific objectives of the RNLN.

Date of Award	10 Jul 2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Wilfried Ivens (Supervisor) & Jikke van Wijnen (Assessor)