Green hydrogen has emerged as a potentially important pathway in decarbonizing the hard-to-abate sectors, including freight, dispatchable power, and industry. Many organizations predict that green hydrogen will become cost competitive with fossil fuels as production costs fall. However, most published green hydrogen cost estimates do not consider storage and distribution costs and how they vary across sectors. We estimate the carbon abatement cost of green hydrogen across major sectors in the United States, considering each sector’s storage and distribution requirements. At current delivered prices, green hydrogen is a prohibitively expensive abatement strategy, with carbon abatement costs of $500–1,250/tCO₂ across sectors. If production costs reduce to $2/kgH₂, low-cost carbon abatement opportunities will remain limited to sectors already using hydrogen (e.g., ammonia) unless storage and distribution costs decrease. Our findings suggest that green hydrogen’s potential is narrower than suggested, emphasizing the need for diverse technological options to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors.

中文翻译：

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绿色氢能在最终用途领域的碳减排成本


绿色氢已成为难以减排的行业（包括货运、可调度电力和工业）脱碳的潜在重要途径。许多组织预测，随着生产成本的下降，绿色氢将变得比化石燃料更具成本竞争力。然而，大多数已发布的绿色氢成本估算并未考虑储存和分销成本以及它们在不同行业之间的差异。考虑到每个行业的储存和分配要求，我们估计了美国主要行业绿色氢的碳减排成本。按照目前的交付价格，绿色氢是一种成本高得令人望而却步的减排策略_{，各行业的}碳减排成本为 500-1,250 美元/吨二氧化碳。如果生产成本降至 2 美元/kgH₂，除非储存和分配成本降低，否则低成本的碳减排机会将仅限于已经使用氢气（例如氨）的行业。我们的研究结果表明，绿色氢的潜力比预期的要窄，这凸显了需要多样化的技术选择来使难以减排的行业脱碳。