From Roads2HyCom Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Wiki - A Reliable Source of Information - Edited by Technology Experts Only

This section is still under construction. Thank you for your patience. Registered user may watch this page by clicking on the link above (visible only when logged in) to be notified when updates are made to this page.

Introduction

This report intends to identify:

• Gaps in the performance of hydrogen technologies that need to be bridged to become a competitive alternative to reference technologies
• Priorities in the research required to bridge the gaps
• Opportunities for near-term application of hydrogen technologies

The identification of gaps, priorities and opportunities should help in developing R&D recommendations for hydrogen technologies

The identification of opportunities could also guide communities that show commitment in developing hydrogen activities in their choice of considered applications. This report therefore provides them with information on following issues for various applications:

• Economic information on the gap between the cost of conventional technologies and hydrogen/fuel cell technologies
• Potential CO2 reductions when using hydrogen/fuel cell technologies
• Insight into opportunities for hydrogen/fuel cell technologies in their region that fit with their ambitions and possibilities

Objectives

"Development of technology pathways", as part of the Roads2HyCom project, intends to identify topics and priorities of research agenda items necessary for making hydrogen/fuel cell technologies competitive to today's applications. This could help communities that want to invest in hydrogen/fuel cell technologies in their investment decisions, i.e. selection of applications and planning of future activities.

Specifications, boundaries and a thorough description of present applications (using so-called "reference technologies" at the moment) that might be suitable for future implementation of hydrogen/fuel cells technologies are provided.

The main objectives are:

• To determine the economics of reference and both SOTA and feasible future H2/FC technologies for different scenarios (e.g. different operation hours or number of units produced)
• To determine the potential reductions in CO2 emissions through usage of H2/FC technologies for the applications considered.

Methodology

General approach

First, 23 potential H2/FC applications are defined and case studies provide information such as

• Description of the applications including economics of the used reference and feasible H2/FC technologies such as EUR/km, EUR/hour of operation or EUR/kWh
• Description of the expected technological and non-technological developments (energy prices, emission policy, fuel policy, etc.) until 2020 with an outlook to 2030

Second, as both the hydrogen cost and the fuel cell system costs are uncertain, the current costs of the reference technologies will be used to evaluate the allowable costs of hydrogen as a function of a range of assumed fuel cell system costs for each application. These evaluations provide, for each single application, a so-called "Line of Equality" or "Window of Opportunity" that illustrates the boundary conditions to be cost competitive to the considered reference technology.

Third, the costs of the applications using SOTA (state-of-the-art) or evaluated 2020/2030 H2/FC technologies are analysed to determine the economic competitiveness against current reference technologies.

Fourth, the gaps between the "Windows of Opportunity" and the SOTA or evaluated 2020/2030 costs of the FC/H2 technologies are determined and analysed in order to know the reasons for different costs. The outcome of these evaluations shows the possibilities to overcome the gaps in order to make the FC/H2 system competitive to the reference technology (e.g. technology development and/or mass production) in more detail.

Potential areas for applications

The potential H2/FC applications are considered in the following areas :

• Passenger cars
• Light trucks
• Buses
• Industrial CHP
• Residential CHP

Large distance applications with designated refuelling locations:

• Aircraft propulsion
• Aircraft APU
• Ship APU

Applications for local transportation:

• Outdoor utility vehicles
• License-free cars (also known as city cars)
• Scooters
• Forklifts
• Aircraft towing vehicles
• Sight-seeing boats
• Pleasure boat APU

Stationary applications for remote and back-up power:

• Back-up power for telecom
• Back-up power for hospitals

Some of the mentioned applications were evaluated for multiple scenarios e.g. annual distance travelled or hours operated, H2-ICE or FC drivetrain etc.

Case study allocation

The table below lists all 23 applications that have been considered in this study. The partners executing the case studies are also listed below:

Table 1: Partner allocation of case studies for ‘Gap & Opportunity analysis’.

One of our leader provided a template for the analysis of the applications. The paragraphs in the template are:

• Description of application
• Description of reference technology
• Description of the market
• Description of FC/H2 technology for the application
• Economic boundary conditions for FC/H2 technology
• CO2 reduction potential Source-to-User
• Conclusions and recommendations
• References

Economics

The H2/FC system, as it is looked upon in this study, only comprises components that are different from the reference technology. For example the drivetrain of the reference technology comprises the fuel tank, internal combustion engine, cooling system, gearbox and exhaust system whereas a FC system comprises the H2 tank, fuel cell stack, cooling system, power inverter, electric motor and battery. Maintenance or replacement costs, if applicable, are included for all technologies in order to obtain the same lifetimes.

Line of Equality for comparison

The applications’ economics are compared on an “equal cost per unit service” basis; the application uses either reference or SOTA/future H2/FC technology. In other words, in order to know if SOTA/future H2/FC technologies are cost-competitive, it is necessary to know how much hydrogen and H2/FC technology are allowed to cost based on equal service (e.g. EUR/km, driven kilometres and lifetime).

The total cost of the reference technology per unit service (both EUR/km and EUR/hr are being used) is used as main input for the comparison and calculated using following factors:

• The capacity of the system (kW)
• The cost of the energy system (EUR/kW)
• The lifetime of the energy system (year)
• The average use of the system (km/year or kWh/year)
• The fuel use of the system (MJ/km or MJ/kWh)
• The cost of the fuel (EUR/GJ)
• Maintenance costs (EUR/km or EUR/kWh)

As this analysis requires a common basis for the cost of the fuel used by reference technologies in 2007 and 2030, it uses the scenario described in Appendix A:

• Price of crude oil in Jan 2007: oil2007 = 60 $/barrel or 7.1 EUR2000/GJ

(0.7575 EUR = 1 $; 159 L/barrel; 34.8 MJ/L; EUR₂₀₀₀ = EUR2007/1.164)

• Price of crude oil in 2030: oil2030 = 14 EUR2000/GJ

The resulting prices, which are used in the analysis, are listed in Table 2:

Table 2: Energy prices in EUR2000 including taxes (for consumers and small industries)

For the evaluation of the cost-competitiveness, the calculated, assumed and targeted costs of SOTA and future H2/FC technologies are plotted (on the x-axis) against a targeted price of hydrogen at the filling station of 65 EUR/GJ or 7.8 EUR/kg (Figure 7), which includes cost of production based on the HyWays production mix, cost of transportation to the filling station and VAT. Other duties are neglected. At this cost level, the hydrogen distribution system and the filling stations should already be well established.

Below the “Line of Equality” lies the “Window of Opportunity”: If the data point reflecting hydrogen cost to the SOTA/future H2/FC system cost lies within the “Window of Opportunity” (see Figure 2, situation A), the conditions for the H2/FC technology are favourable and the vertical distance from the data point to the “Line of Equality” reflects the possibility for taxation of hydrogen.

If the data point reflecting hydrogen cost to SOTA/future H2/FC system cost lies above this “Line of Equality” (see Figure 2, situation B), the conditions for the hydrogen technology are unfavourable. The vertical distance to the “Line of Equality” then reflects necessary subsidies on the cost of hydrogen, if the cost of the SOTA/future H2/FC system would stay the same. If the cost of hydrogen stays the same, the horizontal distance reflects necessary SOTA/future H2/FC system cost reductions e.g. through mass production or technological development. These gaps are then analysed in more detail to research possibilities for cost reductions

Overview and explanation of sensitivities

The main results of this report are based on the comparison of SOTA reference to SOTA FC/H2 technologies. But, in order to consider different situations, this chapter gives an overview of the sensitivities regarding:

• Annual kilometrage
• Cost of fuel
• Comparison of SOTA H2/FC technologies to future (2020) reference technologies

Passenger vehicles equipped with a diesel or gasoline ICEs are compared to fuel cell vehicles. All given results in the chapters thereafter reflect the comparison of SOTA technologies only, where the lifetime of the FC system is considered to be equal to the application’s lifetime and CO2 emissions are not taxed.

Assumed H2/FC System Costs

The cost of the considered application using SOTA H2/FC technology is evaluated for different scenarios like different market penetrations, plotted against cost of hydrogen and evaluated gaps analysed as mentioned above. The total cost of the H2/FC system in EUR/kWe is the sum of the calculated costs of all its parts (FC system, H2 storage, electromotor, battery), for which the equations are given below. In addition, the targets for 2015 from the Implementation plan [1] are compared to reference technologies as well:

• 100 EUR/kW for road propulsion FC system
• < 500 EUR/kW for road APU FC system
• 18 EUR/kW for ICE propulsion system

CO2 emissions

For environmental comparison of different applications a common basis for the CO2 emissions for the fuel use of the reference technology as well as for the hydrogen use for different pathways is established and described in Appendix B. The bases for the emission factors are the Concawe study [2], the HyWays results [3] and the information on the CO2 emission factors for the electricity network in different countries [4;5].

Table 3 provides the source-to-user emission factors for conventional fuels and H2 from different sources, all used in the analysis. The emission factor for biogas is negative, as its use will prevent emission of methane, which has a much larger GHG factor than CO2, into the atmosphere. Furthermore, this table provides a mean of taxing CO2 emissions based on an assumed CO2 tax of 50 EUR/ton CO2 emitted.

Table 3: Source-to-user emission factors for conventional fuels and H2

As the targeted price of hydrogen at the filling station of 65 EUR/GJ (Figure 7) is based on the HyWays production mix, which includes various sources with different CO2 emission factors (Figure 6), Table 3 does in this case not provide the means for CO2 taxation. The HyWays production mix includes a CO2 emissions factor of 56 g CO2/MJ, which means that, based on a CO2 tax of 50EUR/ton, an additional 2,8 EUR/GJ have to be added to reflect CO2 taxation. To illustrate a taxation of 100EUR/ton CO2 emitted, an additional 5,6 EUR/GJ have to be added.

Results

First, some general remarks on the different case studies are made in order to characterise these applications. Second, the economy of the different transport and the stationary applications are compared with each other and with target values from the implementation plan. Third, the effect of the replacement of the reference technology with the hydrogen/fuel cell application on the CO2 emissions is investigated

Cost Scenarios for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells

References