IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v310y2024ics0360544224029761.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Levelized cost of long-distance large-scale transportation of hydrogen in China

Author

Listed:
  • Miao, Huiying
  • Yu, Yadong
  • Wan, Yanming
  • Zhang, Yan
  • Ma, Tieju

Abstract

Hydrogen plays a crucial role in supporting the transition to clean energy systems, and effective hydrogen transportation technologies are essential for the development of the hydrogen economy. However, long-distance, large-scale hydrogen transportation costs in China, particularly for liquid hydrogen trucks (LH2 tank trucks) and gaseous hydrogen pipelines (GH2 pipelines), remain unknown. Using the latest data from the ongoing hydrogen project in China and a techno-economic model, this study estimates the delivery costs of hydrogen over long distances for LH2 tank trucks and GH2 pipelines, and compares them with those of GH2 trucks. Specifically, we analyze the levelized cost of hydrogen transportation (LCOT) for these different technologies at varying distances and conduct sensitivity analyses on how these LCOT would change with factors such as vehicle travel speed, electricity prices, and pipeline capacity. Results show that for short distances (<150 km), GH2 trucks are most cost-effective, with costs around 28.96–34.26 CNY/ton-km. For long distances (>200 km), GH2 pipelines and LH2 tank trucks are more suitable, with pipelines being more cost-effective at higher capacity utilization rates. Lower electricity prices further reduce the LCOT for LH2 tank trucks. Policy recommendations on promoting the development and application of hydrogen transportation technologies are also provided.

Suggested Citation

  • Miao, Huiying & Yu, Yadong & Wan, Yanming & Zhang, Yan & Ma, Tieju, 2024. "Levelized cost of long-distance large-scale transportation of hydrogen in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:310:y:2024:i:c:s0360544224029761
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2024.133201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544224029761
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2024.133201?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Santa Catarina, Artur, 2022. "Wind power generation in Brazil: An overview about investment and scale analysis in 758 projects using the Levelized Cost of Energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    2. Feng, Lele & Dong, Maifan & Qin, Botao & Pang, Jiabao & Babaee, Saeideh, 2024. "H2 production enhancement in underground coal gasification with steam addition: Effect of injection conditions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    3. Xi Yang & Chris P. Nielsen & Shaojie Song & Michael B. McElroy, 2022. "Breaking the hard-to-abate bottleneck in China’s path to carbon neutrality with clean hydrogen," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(10), pages 955-965, October.
    4. Muntasir Shovon, Shaik & Ahamed Akash, Faysal & Abdur Rahman, Md & Rahman, Wahida & Chakraborty, Prosenjeet & Monir, Minhaj Uddin & Sarkar, Shaheen M. & Abd Aziz, Azrina & Chowdhury, Shahariar, 2024. "Advancements in hydrogen generation, storage, and utilizations: A comprehensive review of current trends in Bangladesh," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    5. Falko Ueckerdt & Christian Bauer & Alois Dirnaichner & Jordan Everall & Romain Sacchi & Gunnar Luderer, 2021. "Potential and risks of hydrogen-based e-fuels in climate change mitigation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 11(5), pages 384-393, May.
    6. Egerer, Jonas & Farhang-Damghani, Nima & Grimm, Veronika & Runge, Philipp, 2024. "The industry transformation from fossil fuels to hydrogen will reorganize value chains: Big picture and case studies for Germany," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 358(C).
    7. Alexandra Devlin & Jannik Kossen & Haulwen Goldie-Jones & Aidong Yang, 2023. "Global green hydrogen-based steel opportunities surrounding high quality renewable energy and iron ore deposits," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    8. Liu, Zhijian & Fan, Guangyao & Meng, Xiangrui & Hu, Yubin & Wu, Di & Jin, Guangya & Li, Guiqiang, 2024. "Multi-time scale operation optimization for a near-zero energy community energy system combined with electricity-heat-hydrogen storage," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    9. Chen, Leyuan & Wang, Yao & Jiang, Yancui & Zhang, Caizhi & Liao, Quan & Li, Jun & Wu, Jihao & Gao, Xin, 2024. "Life cycle assessment of liquid hydrogen fuel for vehicles with different production routes in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 299(C).
    10. Kang, Dong-Hyun & An, Ji-Hong & Lee, Chul-Jin, 2024. "Numerical modeling and optimization of thermal insulation for liquid hydrogen storage tanks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    11. Lee, Ju-Sung & Cherif, Ali & Yoon, Ha-Jun & Seo, Seung-Kwon & Bae, Ju-Eon & Shin, Ho-Jin & Lee, Chulgu & Kwon, Hweeung & Lee, Chul-Jin, 2022. "Large-scale overseas transportation of hydrogen: Comparative techno-economic and environmental investigation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    12. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt & Gregory F. Nemet & Miha Jensterle & Gunnar Luderer, 2022. "Probabilistic feasibility space of scaling up green hydrogen supply," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(9), pages 854-865, September.
    13. v. Mikulicz-Radecki, Flora & Giehl, Johannes & Grosse, Benjamin & Schöngart, Sarah & Rüdt, Daniel & Evers, Maximilian & Müller-Kirchenbauer, Joachim, 2023. "Evaluation of hydrogen transportation networks - A case study on the German energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PB).
    14. Xiang, Pianpian & Jiang, Kejun & Wang, Jiachen & He, Chenmin & Chen, Sha & Jiang, Weiyi, 2024. "Evaluation of LCOH of conventional technology, energy storage coupled solar PV electrolysis, and HTGR in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 353(PA).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qin, Guojin & Zhang, Chao & Wang, Bohong & Ni, Pingan & Wang, Yihuan, 2025. "An interpretable machine learning model for failure pressure prediction of blended hydrogen natural gas pipelines containing a crack-in-dent defect," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yihan Wang & Chen Chen & Yuan Tao & Zongguo Wen, 2025. "Uneven renewable energy supply constrains the decarbonization effects of excessively deployed hydrogen-based DRI technology," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-14, December.
    2. Takuma Watari & André Cabrera Serrenho & Lukas Gast & Jonathan Cullen & Julian Allwood, 2023. "Feasible supply of steel and cement within a carbon budget is likely to fall short of expected global demand," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Shan, Rui & Kittner, Noah, 2025. "Sector-specific strategies to increase green hydrogen adoption," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    4. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt, 2024. "The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap," Papers 2406.07210, arXiv.org.
    5. Danlu Xu & Zhoubin Liu & Jiahui Zhu & Qin Fang & Rui Shan, 2023. "Linking Cost Decline and Demand Surge in the Hydrogen Market: A Case Study in China," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-13, June.
    6. Luo, Zongkai & Zou, Guofu & Chen, Ke & Chen, Wenshang & Deng, Qihao & He, Dandi & Xiong, Zhongzhuang & Chen, Ben, 2025. "Evolution of current distribution and performance degradation mechanism of PEMFC during transient loading under gas starvation condition: An experimental study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 388(C).
    7. Fazeli, Reza & Longden, Thomas & Beck, Fiona J., 2025. "Dynamics of price-based competition between blue and green hydrogen with net zero emissions targets," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    8. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt, 2025. "The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 110-123, January.
    9. Wang, Ke & Liu, Fangming & Liu, Junling, 2025. "Techno-economic assessment of different clean hydrogen development pathways across industries in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 382(C).
    10. Campion, Nicolas & Nami, Hossein & Swisher, Philip R. & Vang Hendriksen, Peter & Münster, Marie, 2023. "Techno-economic assessment of green ammonia production with different wind and solar potentials," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    11. Bak, Youngseok & Ryu, Hyuncheol & Choi, Gobong & Lee, Dongwoo & Lee, Jong Min, 2025. "Optimization of operational strategies for industrial applications of solar-based green hydrogen," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PD).
    12. Haozhe Yang & Ranjit Deshmukh & Sangwon Suh, 2023. "Global transcontinental power pools for low-carbon electricity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Clara Bachorz & Philipp C. Verpoort & Gunnar Luderer & Falko Ueckerdt, 2025. "Exploring techno-economic landscapes of abatement options for hard-to-electrify sectors," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-14, December.
    14. Steffen Link & Lara Schneider & Annegret Stephan & Lukas Weymann & Patrick Plötz, 2025. "Feasibility of meeting future battery demand via domestic cell production in Europe," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 10(4), pages 526-534, April.
    15. Qing Chang & Xiangbo Fan & Shaohui Zou, 2025. "Threshold Effects of Renewable Energy Investment on the Energy Efficiency–Fossil Fuel Consumption Nexus: Evidence from 71 Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-20, April.
    16. Lan, Yuncheng & Lu, Junhui & Wang, Suilin, 2023. "Study of the geometry and structure of a thermoelectric leg with variable material properties and side heat dissipation based on thermodynamic, economic, and environmental analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    17. Zhang, Xiangzhen & Xu, Miaofu & Chen, Zilin & Yang, Xiaochen & Yang, Xiangchen & Zhao, Tongxian & Ye, Rui & Bian, Xiaojuan & Gao, Yao & Han, Ruixiong & Sun, Liangrui & Lu, Huihua & Li, Yuhui & Ge, Rui, 2024. "Thermal performance research on the zero liquid helium consumption cryostat for a superconducting undulator," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).
    18. Abadie, Luis Mª & Chamorro, José M., 2023. "Investment in wind-based hydrogen production under economic and physical uncertainties," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 337(C).
    19. Yihan Wang & Zongguo Wen & Mao Xu & Christian Doh Dinga, 2025. "Long-term transformation in China’s steel sector for carbon capture and storage technology deployment," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.
    20. Kim, Hyeonjun & Song, Gayoung & Ha, Yoonhee, 2025. "Green hydrogen export potential in each Southeast Asian country based on exportable volumes and levelized cost of hydrogen," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 383(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:310:y:2024:i:c:s0360544224029761. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.