Comparative Economics of Hydrogen and Carbon-neutral Methane Blending into the Existing City Gas Network

摘要

This study evaluated decarbonization impact and cost of hydrogen blending and carbon-neutral methane (CN methane)blending into the existing city gas network. These two gases are produced from renewable energy. Larger scale of variablerenewables deployment allows to curb the scale of facilities like electrolyzer and methanation and can reduce CO2abatements cost in both cases. Decarbonization impact of hydrogen blending is limited, though the CO2 abatement cost issmaller than CN methane blending. On the other hand, CO2 abatement cost of CN methane is higher than hydrogenblending, though CN methane blending can bring about larger decarbonization impact on the city gas network. These resultscome from the fact that hydrogen blending can receive the benefit in using the existing infrastructure that is regarded as anadvantage inherent to CN methane. However, it should be noted that in reality blending hydrogen or CN methane into citygas causes adjustment of calorie and combustion performance in equipment at consumers, and the adjustment cost incurredby hydrogen blending is supposed to be much higher than CN methane blending. This factor will be included in the futurestudies.