Hydrogen Cost Drivers: Pathways to Lowering Green Hydrogen Costs

Abstract: Hydrogen has gained more attention as a transportation fuel. The transit industry has adopted hydrogen as a fuel to power fuel cell electric buses. The trucking industry is also looking at using hydrogen and fuel cells to power long-haul Class 8 trucks and the maritime industry is investigating using fuel cells to decarbonize the shipping sector. The federal government has committed funding to support the hydrogen economy through the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Hubs program. However, hydrogen has encountered some challenges in the transportation sector.
The federal government aims to increase production of green hydrogen to serve the transportation sector. Much of this hydrogen will be produced with electrolyzers, which use renewable energy to produce hydrogen from water. The biggest challenge is that hydrogen has remained expensive. In fact, hydrogen costs are one of the largest contributors to total cost of ownership over the lifetime of the vehicle. This has caused the total cost of ownership for hydrogen-powered vehicles to be unfavorable, which has hindered the adoption of fuel cell vehicles. This session will analyze the levelized cost of green hydrogen and explore the factors that are driving high prices. This analysis will also discuss options for addressing these factors.