The Cost of Hydrogen Infrastructure

Abstract

Besides the production of hydrogen itself, the costs of transportation, storage and distribution of hydrogen is a crucial issue for the transition towards a so called “hydrogen economy”. Based on recent literature, own data collection and calculations, we analysed the investment, fixed and variable operation costs for transport, storage and distribution of gaseous and liquid hydrogen in cost per unit hydrogen delivered. Besides road transport, we focused on a hydrogen pipeline network for the distribution of hydrogen to supply industry, households and road transport. In order to estimate the costs, a generic concept of a pipeline network was developed and design capacities were assigned. The results show that the distribution of hydrogen add a significant amount to the production costs of hydrogen, which has to be born by customers.