Renewable Hydrogen Supply Scenarios for Inland Waterway Transport in Europe

Assessment of GHG Emissions and Costs

Abstract

The European inland waterway transport needs to substitute 6.2 TWh of fossil diesel by renewable energy carriers. For hydrogen retrofit solutions investigated in the European project “Synergetics”, different Well-to-Tank pathways have been analysed to supply renewable hydrogen to Rotterdam, including buffer storage and fuelling to vessels. This paper compares two dominant scenarios with regards to GHG emissions and costs. One scenario is based on PV electricity from Morocco, transported to Rotterdam for electrolysis. The other scenario is calculated with electricity from offshore wind farms in the Northern Sea. The calculation of the PV scenario leads to specific emissions for the hydrogen supplied to vessels of 51 gCO_2eq/kWh_H2 with levelized costs of hydrogen of 0.12 €/kWh_H2. The wind scenario led to 16 gCO_2eq/kWh_H2 with 0.19 €/kWh_H2. The electrolysis has the highest impact on emissions and costs, especially the electricity demand. Accordingly, lower emissions of PV electricity supply would have a high influence on the overall results. On the other hand, for the low emission renewable hydrogen supply with wind power a further reduction of the costs of the installation will be relevant.