Thorough economic and carbon footprint analysis of overall hydrogen supply for different hydrogen carriers from overseas production to inland distribution

Abstract

Environmental problems resulting from fossil-based energy and the depletion of fossil fuels made the alternation of fossil fuels to the environmentally friendly energy resources necessary, and several countries including Korea, Japan, and Germany have recently spotlighted hydrogen as a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. However, the countries heading for the hydrogen economy are usually unable to meet their demands with the inland supply alone due to infrastructure and economic problems caused by expensive resources and a shortage of land. In this kind of background, introducing overseas hydrogen which can be produced economically by utilizing unused resources and land overseas is regarded as an attractive way to meet demands. In this study, an economic as well as a carbon footprint analysis of overall hydrogen supply from overseas to inland for several hydrogen carriers, including liquid hydrogen, liquid organic hydrogen carriers, and ammonia, were conducted. For ship transportation sector, the cross-overs between unit hydrogen costs of liquid organic hydrogen carriers and liquid hydrogen could be found at around 4,000 km and 1 million tons of hydrogen in trends according to distance and amount, respectively. And for distribution sector, pipeline is significantly feasible due to the large amount while trailers show feasibility with hydrogen amount less than around 4,500 tons for delivery sector. A case study of importing hydrogen from Indonesia to Korea was conducted presenting feasibility with all unit hydrogen costs below the 2030 target as stipulated in the Korean roadmap as well as a guideline regarding which sector contributes majorly and should be improved technically and strategically to fulfill the 2040 target in the roadmap. Here, the uncertainty analysis on the overall carbon footprint for the case study was additionally conducted to indicate the future risks of carbon emission from the immature technology.