Decarbonization pathways of Hard-to-Abate sectors through hydrogen blending solutions

Following up on European Regulatory plans towards carbon neutrality targets by exploiting cost-effective, reliable and easy-to-implement solutions based on hydrogen penetration in the Hard-to-Abate sectors are a challenge. Under this umbrella, the authors proposed a methodological approach to model the demand and supply of HTA sector needs (e.g. electricity, heat), integrated with proprietary databases of H2-specific production costs and related CO2 emission factors, and of HTA sectors (e.g. refinery, paper production, glass & steel manufacturing) specific consumptions (electricity, heat) and emissions per production unit. The authors presented an H2-CH4 blending model capable of assessing blended fuel CO2 emission factors and OPEX through maps. The first map shows that achieving a specific decarbonization target, as an example, 20% in respect of the current configuration, requires up to 70% blending of blue H2 (80 kg CO2/MWh emission factor) or only 50% blending of green H2 (near-zero CO2 emissions). The second map incorporates LCOH and Carbon Tax to evaluate economic feasibility. In a case study with CH4 priced at 70 EUR/MWh and CO2 Tax of 100 EUR/ton, green H2 remains costlier, while blue H2 blending leads to a slight OPEX reduction of 2 EUR/MWh, since Carbon Tax is applied. Thanks to these maps, a sensitivity analysis varying H2 blending fraction with CH4 has been performed for five HTA sectors, highlighting CO2 emissions reduction potential, up to 70% in the sectors with larger heat demands, such as Oil&Gas, and evaluating OPEX in respect to the reference scenario, showing that at the current CO2 Tax of almost 100 EUR/ton and for the actual LCOH the decarbonisation economic viability would require the support of regulation and environmental policies implementation.