Abstract
The goal of the European energy policy is to achieve climate neutrality. The long-term energy strategies of various European countries include additional targets such as the diversification of energy sources, maintenance of security of supply, and reduction of import dependency. When optimizing energy systems, these strategic policy targets are often only considered in a rudimentary manner and thus, the understanding of the corresponding interdependencies is lacking. Moreover, hydrogen is considered as a key component of a fully decarbonized energy system, but its role in the power sector remains unclear due to the low round-trip efficiencies.This study reveals how fully decarbonized European power systems can benefit from hydrogen in terms of overall system costs and the achievement of strategic policy targets. We analyzed a broad spectrum of scenarios using an energy system optimization model and varied model constraints that reflect strategic policy targets. Our results are threefold. First, compared to power systems without hydrogen, systems using hydrogen realize savings of 14–16% in terms of the total system costs. Second, the implementation of a hydrogen infrastructure reduces the number of infeasible scenarios when structural policy targets are considered within the power system. Third, the role of hydrogen is highly diverse at a national level. Particularly, in countries with low renewable energy potential, hydrogen plays a crucial role. Here, high levels of self-sufficiency and security of supply are achieved by deploying hydrogen-based power generation of up to 46% of their annual electricity demand, realized via imports of green hydrogen.
Highlights
Even when assuming significantly higher hydrogen technology and import costs, the total system costs remain below those for power systems without hydrogen. This relates to the fact that power generation overcapacities and battery storage can be substantially reduced if hydrogen is available for long-term storage
This is in contrast with the findings of Cao et al, who report higher system costs for systems with hydrogen in the power and transport sectors (Cao et al, 2020)
Natural gas is still available for flexible utilization in gas power plants
Summary
The European Union (EU) is pursuing the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 with the European Green Deal1 This goal requires a massive but affordable expansion of renewable energy (RE) and the electrification of the heat and transport sector (Deng et al, 2012). In order to design adequate future power systems, energy system optimization models deploy least-cost flexibility options, such as an extensive expansion of the power grid (Cao et al, 2020). Such system configurations may deviate strongly from targets set in energy policy for the transition of the energy system. This leads to the question of how political targets can be better considered when modeling future energy systems
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