An Analysis of Renewable Energy Sources for Developing a Sustainable and Low-Carbon Hydrogen Economy in China

Abstract

A significant effort is required to reduce China’s dependency on fossil fuels while also supporting worldwide efforts to reduce climate change and develop hydrogen energy systems. A hydrogen economy must include renewable energy sources (RESs), which can offer a clean and sustainable energy source for producing hydrogen. This study uses an integrated fuzzy AHP–fuzzy TOPSIS method to evaluate and rank renewable energy sources for developing a hydrogen economy in China. This is a novel approach because it can capture the uncertainty and vagueness in the decision-making process and provide a comprehensive and robust evaluation of the alternatives. Moreover, it considers multiple criteria and sub-criteria that reflect the environmental, economic, technical, social, and political aspects of RESs from the perspective of a hydrogen economy. This study identified five major criteria, fifteen sub-criteria, and six RES alternatives for hydrogen production. This integrated approach uses fuzzy AHP to evaluate and rank the criteria and sub-criteria and fuzzy TOPSIS to identify the most suitable and feasible RES. The results show that environmental, economic, and technical criteria are the most important criteria. Solar, wind, and hydropower are the top three RES alternatives that are most suitable and feasible. Furthermore, biomass, geothermal, and tidal energy were ranked lower, which might be due to the limitations and challenges in their adoption and performance in the context of the criteria and sub-criteria used for the analysis. This study’s findings add to the literature on guidelines to strategize for renewable energy adoption for the hydrogen economy in China.