Social cost-benefit assessment as a post-optimal analysis for hydrogen supply chain design and deployment: Application to Occitania (France)

Abstract

A lot of recent studies have concluded that hydrogen could gradually become a much more significant component of the European energy mix for mobility and stationary fuel cell system applications. Yet, the challenge of developing a future commercial hydrogen economy still remains through the deployment of a viable hydrogen supply chain and an increasing fuel cell vehicle market share, which allows to narrow the existing cost difference regarding the conventional fossil fuel vehicle market. In this paper, the market penetration of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, as substitutes for internal combustion engine vehicles has been evaluated from a social and a subsidy-policy perspective from 2020 to 2050. For this purpose, the best compromise hydrogen supply chain network configuration after the sequential application of an optimization strategy and a multi-criteria decision-making tool has been assessed through a Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) to determine whether the hydrogen mobility deployment increases enough the social welfare. The scientific objective of this work is essentially based on the development of a methodological framework to quantify potential societal benefits of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The case study of the Occitania Region in France supports the analysis. The externality costs involve the abatement cost of CO2, noise and local pollution as well as platinum depletion. A subsidy policy scenario has also been implemented. For the case study considered, the results obtained that are not intended to be general, show that CO2 abatement dominates the externalities, platinum is the second largest externality, yet reducing the benefits obtained by the CO2 abatement. The positive externalities from air pollution and noise abatement almost reach to compensate for the negative costs caused by platinum depletion. The externalities have a positive effect from 2025. Using a societal cost accounting framework with externalities and subsidies, hydrogen transition timing is reduced by four years for the example considered.