Green hydrogen application in the hard-to-abate industry: a feasibility study

Hard-to-abate industries play an essential role in the energy sector. In Europe, they account for around one-quarter of the primary energy, responsible for a non-eligible percentage of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since energy mainly comes from fossil fuel employment such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Renewable hydrogen is expected to contribute to the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries to reach the EU goals of GHG emission reduction. Despite the significant investments the EU and the Member States have foreseen through different financial channels, there is still uncertainty about the actual involvement of renewable hydrogen in decarbonisation. While the potential for significant CO2 emission reduction is high in the hard-to-abate industry, several barriers (including implementing regulations, low fossil-fuel prices, industry processes adaptation, increased investment cost, and knowledge and trust lack) hinder a wider adoption of renewable hydrogen. The first step for the market uptake of renewable hydrogen in the hard-to-abate industry is the preliminary techno-economic evaluation of integrating a hydrogen generation, storage, transport and end-use plant in existing facilities. The paper aims to investigate the techno-economic sustainability of a photovoltaic (PV) plant coupled with electrolyser units within the aluminium fluoride production plant of Fluorsid S.p.A. located in Cagliari, Italy. The preliminary analysis of the power-to-hydrogen plant presented in this paper considers one single hydrofluoric acid production process burner as a reference case study for future up-scaling. Still, it approaches the integration problem from a systemic point of view by considering the opportunity to exploit an existing power surplus generated onsite by waste heat recovery. The analysis shows that power-to-gas integration can produce high environmental benefits; however, economic sustainability is far from achieved due to high investment costs and unfavourable energy commodity prices. Public support is fundamental to reducing investment risk and increasing profitability, so the policymakers' role is crucial for the full hydrogen market development.