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.

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终端使用领域绿色氢的碳减排成本


绿色氢已成为难以减少的行业（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，随着生产成本下降，绿色氢将比化石燃料更具成本竞争力。然而，大多数公布的绿色氢成本估算并未考虑存储和分配成本以及它们在不同行业之间的差异。考虑到每个部门的存储和分配要求，我们估计了美国主要部门的绿色氢的碳减排成本。按照目前的交付价格，绿氢是一种极其昂贵的减排策略，各行业的碳减排成本为 500-1,250 美元/tCO ₂ 。如果生产成本降低至2美元/kgH ₂ ，低成本碳减排机会仍将仅限于已经使用氢气（例如氨）的部门，除非储存和分配成本降低。我们的研究结果表明，绿色氢的潜力比建议的要窄，强调需要多种技术选择来使难以减排的行业脱碳。