New publication: "What will be the hydrogen and power demands of the process industry in a climate-neutral Germany?"

The scientific paper "What will be the hydrogen and power demands of the process industry in a climate-neutral Germany?" published by Hendrik Scharf, Ole Sauerbrey and Dominik Möst, looks at the impact of the defossilization of industry on the future demand for hydrogen and other forms of energy. The study presents a basic bottom-up model that uses techno-economic data of industrial production processes to identify the most cost-effective low-carbon options (hydrogen-based and direct electrification solutions) for a range of scenarios considering different production systems. The aim of the research is to determine the hydrogen and electricity demand resulting from the implementation of these most cost-effective low-carbon options in the German process industry by 2045, which corresponds to the German government's target year for achieving climate neutrality.

The results of the study show that the expected industrial hydrogen consumption in 2045 is between 265 TWh and 473 TWh, depending on hydrogen prices and supply costs. The range for direct electricity consumption in the process industry is between 147 TWh and 338 TWh. The cost-covering hydrogen prices relevant for the choice of low-carbon options are in the range of the benchmark purchase costs for blue and green hydrogen from offshore wind power, which are between 40 €/MWh and 97 €/MWh.

The article is published in the Journal of Cleaner Production and is available open access at the following link: https: //doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.142354