When will hydrogen become a competitive transport fuel?

摘要

When hydrogen becomes competitive to conventional fuels depends on the price of oil. Since there is noprofessional consensus about the oil price level that is likely to prevail when hydrogen and fuel cell(HFC) technology is ready for commercialisation in automotive use, the paper focuses on the oil pricethat would make HFC technology competitive at that time. This price is called the threshold oil pricefor hydrogen competitiveness. To arrive at this threshold price a number of simplifying assumptionsare made and a competitiveness model is developed. The model is used to examine a number ofscenarios characterised by different fuel taxation principles. The conclusions are that 1) If thedifferences in the level of fuel taxation between USA and EU continue to exist, hydrogen and fuel cellswill be competitive in automotive use in Europe a long time before it will in the US. 2) At the oil pricethat makes natural gas based hydrogen competitive, renewable based hydrogen may very well be morecompetitive. 3) Changes in taxation principles from final use towards all use taxation and fromdifferentiation according to income distribution and industrial competitiveness towards differentiationaccording to environmental pressure will strengthen the competitiveness of hydrogen. 4) TheHydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform in Europe will not benefit from introducing a hydrogencost target as in the US DOE approach but rather from focusing on the performance parameters of thehydrogen infrastructure