Facilitating deep decarbonization via sector coupling of green hydrogen and ammonia

Green hydrogen and ammonia are forecasted to have key roles in deep decarbonization, although national energy system models have yet to capture their full integration potential with sector coupling in future scenarios. In this study, the Power-to-X sector coupling potential of green hydrogen and ammonia is explored via a case study on the national-scale electricity grid of India in which the projected electricity demands for hydrogen and ammonia production account for nearly 25% of the total Indian electricity demand in 2050. Here we show that connecting the required fleets of electrolyzers to the grid and leveraging low-cost storage of ammonia with coupled sectors, such as shipping, steel, and agriculture, would provide valuable short-duration and long-duration load-shifting services. We find that this system design uses seasonal ammonia production patterns to reduce the levelized cost of hydrogen and ammonia, reduce curtailment, provide system resilience to interannual weather variations, and reduce the requirement for long duration energy storage or firm generating capacity while reducing total system cost.