Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595

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Energy Reports
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

Research paper

Environmental impact assessment of hydrogen production via steam

methane reforming based on emissions data
∗
Hannah Hyunah Cho, Vladimir Strezov , Tim J. Evans
School of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: Steam methane reforming (SMR) using natural gas is the most commonly used technology for hydrogen
Received 26 July 2022 production. Industrial hydrogen production contributes to pollutant emissions, which may differ from
Received in revised form 6 September 2022 the theoretical estimates due to process conditions, type and state of installed pollution control
Accepted 5 October 2022
equipment. The aim of this study was to estimate the impacts of hydrogen production using facility-
Available online 20 October 2022
level real emissions data collected from multiple US EPA databases. The study applied the ReCiPe2016
Keywords: impact assessment method and considered 12 midpoint and 14 endpoint impacts for 33 US SMR
Hydrogen hydrogen production facilities. Global warming impacts were mostly driven by CO2 emissions and
Impact assessment contributed to 94.6% of the endpoint impacts on human health, while global warming impact on
Emissions terrestrial ecosystems contributed to 98.3% of the total endpoint impacts on ecosystems. The impacts
Steam reforming
estimated by direct emissions from the 33 facilities were 9.35 kg CO2 e/kg H2 which increased to 11.2
Emission reduction
kg CO2 e/kg H2 when the full life cycle of hydrogen production including upstream emissions was
Life Cycle Assessment
included. The average global warming impact could be reduced by 5.9% and 11.1% with increases in
hydrogen production efficiency by 5% and 10%, respectively. Potential impact reductions are also found
when natural gas hydrogen production feedstock is replaced by renewable sources, with the greatest
reduction of 78.1% found in hydrogen production via biomass gasification, followed by 68.2% reduction
in landfill gas and 53.7% reduction in biomethane-derived hydrogen production.
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction and has high energy conversion efficiencies ranging between

Hydrogen is receiving significant attention as a versatile en-
ergy carrier with potential for being utilised in multiple industrial
sectors, including energy generation, chemical production, trans-
port sector, and iron and steel production, with relatively low
environmental impacts when produced from renewable sources
(Climate Change Committee, 2018; El-Shafie et al., 2019; Sgobbi
et al., 2016; US Department of Energy, 2020a). Hydrogen is a
low-carbon fuel (Kannah et al., 2021), and one of the options
for transitioning towards low-carbon economy (Hanley et al.,
2018), which is considered to be one of the solutions that can
decarbonise three of the most polluting industry sectors, includ-
ing transport, electricity generation and industrial manufactur-
ing sectors (US Department of Energy, 2020b). Hydrogen can
be produced through various technologies using both fossil and
renewable sources (IEA, 2021a) and among those, steam methane
reforming (SMR) using natural gas is the most commonly used
technology in commercial-scale production (Alhamdani et al.,
2017; El-Shafie et al., 2019) because it is technologically mature
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vladimir.strezov@mq.edu.au (V. Strezov).
74%–85% (Nikolaidis and Poullikkas, 2017).
In November 2021, the United Nations (UN) Climate Change
Conference of the Parties (COP26) launched the Global Methane
Pledge to achieve the goal of limiting global temperature rise with
more than 100 countries agreeing to reduce methane emissions
by 30% by 2030 (Climate Change Conference, 2021). It is ex-
pected that many countries with various high-emissions sectors
may face challenges, such as phasing out of coal fired power
stations and transition to sustainable transport systems including
replacement of diesel-fuelled vehicles with electric vehicles (Cli-
mate Change Conference, 2021). Hydrogen can be integrated into
the high-emission sectors for mitigating emissions through the
production of hydrogen-derived fuels and hydrogen-driven fuel
cell vehicles (Ahluwalia and Patel, 2021).
Current global consumption of hydrogen is estimated to be 70
million metric tons (MMT) per year (US Department of Energy,
2020b) with the global hydrogen market size projected to be $2.5
trillion (Hydrogen Council, 2017). The major applications of hy-
drogen include oil refining (33%), ammonia manufacturing (27%),
methanol production (11%) and steel production (3%), with the
global demand for hydrogen consumption projected to increase
(IEA, 2019). Production of hydrogen with the SMR technology
is conducted either onsite by oil refineries as a by-product of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.10.053
2352-4847/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans
petrochemical production or through externally supplied natural
gas (IEA, 2021b). Of the 70 MMT, US produced about 10 MMT
in 2020 (US Department of Energy, 2020b) accounting for 14.3%
of the total global hydrogen production with most of the US
hydrogen produced from fossil fuel sources, mainly from natural
gas (99% is from fossil fuels with only 1% by water electrolysis
in 2020), which resulted in 41.3 MMT greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions from the hydrogen sector in 2020 (US EPA, 2020a).
Although the end use of hydrogen is carbon emission free, the
SMR process is energy intensive and requires high temperature
for effective reforming resulting in GHG emissions (Alhamdani
et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2019), with operation of the reformer
contributing to 72%–80% of the total emissions (Cetinkaya et al.,
2012; Hajjaji et al., 2013, 2016).
As an attempt to reduce emissions from hydrogen produc-
tion, a number of projects are underway, including a 20 MW
solar-powered water electrolysis plant in Florida, US and nuclear-
powered hydrogen production plants in multiple US States (US
Department of Energy, 2020a). California state has also announced
its ambitious emissions reduction target where 250,000 hydrogen
charging stations and 5 million electric vehicles would play an
important role for emissions reduction by 2030 (Fuel Cell and
Hydrogen Energy Association, 2019). Production of renewable
hydrogen by water electrolysis is expected to increase in the
US through significant reduction in overall production cost of
electrolysis system by 64%–73% with improved efficiency of elec-
trolysis from 60% to 80% by 2030, which is expected to lead the
US hydrogen sector to $140 billion of annual revenue by 2030
(Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, 2019). Depending
on the energy source and the efficiency of electrolysers, overall
GHG emissions from water electrolysis can vary considerably.
For instance, water electrolysis using 2016 US grid electricity
(34.2% coal, 31.6 natural gas, 20.3 nuclear, 6.5 hydro and 4.9
wind power generation) results in GHG emissions of 27.3 kg
CO2 /kg H2 (Siddiqui and Dincer, 2019). Solar-powered electrolysis
is reported to have GHG emissions of 2.3 kg CO2 /kg H2 , while
grid-assisted solar-powered electrolysis shows GHG emissions
ranging between 4.3–15.8 kg CO2 /kg H2 , with lower values found
in the case where 7% of electricity is supplied by grid electricity
(North West Interconnected System in Australia with average
GHG emissions of 620 g CO2 /kWh) (Palmer et al., 2021) and
higher values found when 71% is supplied by grid electricity
(US natural gas electricity with average GHG emissions of 410 g
CO2 /kWh) (Finke et al., 2021). The emissions from solar-powered
electrolysis are mainly attributed to manufacturing of solar cells
(Bhandari et al., 2014; Palmer et al., 2021), as well as efficiency
of solar-powered electrolyser and type of solar energy storage to
a lesser extent (Palmer et al., 2021).
In order to set effective emissions reduction targets, it is neces-
sary to fully understand emissions and the corresponding impacts
of hydrogen production. Many previous studies have focused
on technological aspects of hydrogen production by elaborating
different production technologies with comparing the effect of
different catalysts on process efficiencies (El-Shafie et al., 2019;
Holladay et al., 2009). However, there is still an information gap
on estimating the environmental impacts of hydrogen production
processes, particularly using direct emissions data. A study by Za-
pata et al. (2018) estimated Criteria Air Pollutant (CAP) and GHG
emissions from multiple industrial sectors in the US, including
hydrogen production, using their own air quality emission mod-
els, and presented their study results on a 4 km spatial resolution.
They suggested that 32 new hydrogen facilities and 15 biomass
gasification facilities would be required to meet the increasing
demand for hydrogen in California State, USA. Sun et al. (2019)
utilised publicly available emissions data from US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) for analysis of pollutant emissions from
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595
US hydrogen production facilities focusing on identifying the
source of emissions and comparing emissions from the facili-
ties in California State with national average emissions. Despite
thorough investigation of the emissions, environmental impacts
caused by the emissions were not assessed in these studies. In
order to suggest cleaner pathways for hydrogen production, some
studies compared the impacts of hydrogen production from re-
newable sources with conventional natural gas-based hydrogen.
Siddiqui and Dincer (2019) compared global warming impacts of
five different hydrogen production pathways and concluded that
water electrolysis using US electricity mix was the most impactful
pathway, while biomass gasification was found to be the most en-
vironmentally benign, indicating renewable electricity generation
is critical for reducing the impacts of hydrogen production via
electrolysis. Valente et al. (2021) investigated the environmental
impacts of hydrogen production via wind-powered electrolysis,
biomass gasification and natural gas-based SMR, and found large
variations in the impact values according to the applied produc-
tion pathways with biomass gasification having the least global
warming impact. They pointed out on difficulties in comparing
the impacts of different hydrogen production pathways with
other studies due to inconsistencies in technological processes
and impact assessment methods. These two studies showed con-
siderable differences in GHG emissions from electrolysis using
US electricity mix and wind power which highlighted the great
influence of the source of electricity on the potential impacts
of each hydrogen production pathway. Along with the source of
electricity, materials consumption for construction of wind en-
ergy system, including manufacture of wind turbines, is another
major factor affecting overall emissions of hydrogen production
(Patyk et al., 2013; Valente et al., 2020), while the use of noble
metals for electrocatalyst and other metal inputs for manufacture
of electrolyser cells are reported as major contributors to overall
production cost of hydrogen (Kumar and Himabindu, 2019).
Despite numerous studies evaluating impacts of hydrogen pro-
duction, there have been no studies that assess environmental
impacts using real facility emissions data. This study aims to
conduct impact assessment from direct emissions of US hydrogen
production facilities based on natural gas SMR technology using
facility-level emissions data collected from the US EPA database.
Impact assessment from direct emissions of the current facilities
is important to determine the key pollutants of concern for the
SMR technology for their improved control. This study is also
important to enable full life cycle assessment of hydrogen pro-
duction when impact assessment of methane is also considered.
Methane is mainly of fossil origin, but it can also be produced
from renewable energy sources through anaerobic digestion of
biomass and wastes (Strezov and Evans, 2015).
2. Methods
2.1. Goal and scope definition
In order to analyse the environmental impacts of pollutant
emissions from hydrogen production processes, 33 dedicated hy-
drogen production facilities were selected among 114 US SMR
facilities. Since hydrogen production facilities within petroleum
refineries report their emissions as a facility (refinery) total, it
is not possible to differentiate the emissions between hydrogen
production and petroleum refining, thus co-production facilities
were excluded from this analysis. Fig. 1 presents the system
boundary considered in this study. Only on-site emissions, includ-
ing direct stack and fugitive emissions were considered, while
off-site emissions transported to other facilities for recycling and
energy recovery were excluded from the analysis. All emissions
from each facility were considered to attribute to hydrogen pro-
duction with the corresponding impacts translated into per kg of
produced hydrogen, which is the functional unit of this study.
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans
Fig. 1. System boundary of this study.
2.2. Inventory analysis
The amount of annual hydrogen production of the 33 selected
SMR facilities was estimated based on 2016 merchant hydrogen
plant capacities data obtained from the Pacific Northwest Na-
tional Laboratory (PNNL) (PNNL, 2017), with estimated capacities
based on the compiled data from the US Energy Information
Administration (EIA) and public releases from the hydrogen pro-
duction companies. PNNL reports hydrogen production capacities
as captive and merchant hydrogen production. The former usu-
ally produces hydrogen for supplying on-site operating energy,
whereas the latter produces hydrogen for sale to other enti-
ties, therefore the merchant hydrogen production capacities were
used in this work. The annual hydrogen production for the se-
lected SMR facilities was estimated by applying 80% production
efficiency to the 2016 merchant hydrogen plant capacities pro-
vided by PNNL, following the calculation process proposed by Sun
et al. (2019). The 80% production efficiency was also in agreement
with stoichiometric CO2 /H2 ratio ranging between 7.50–10 (kg
CO2 /kg H2 ) (Sun et al., 2019). The spatial distribution of the
estimated annual production of each US SMR facility is presented
in Fig. 2.
Data for pollutant emissions from the SMR hydrogen facilities
for the year 2017 were collected from multiple databases with
GHG (CO2 , CH4 and N2 O) emissions obtained from the US Green-
house Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) (US EPA, 2020b), Criteria
Air Pollutant (CAP) emissions data from the National Emissions
Inventory (NEI) (US EPA, 2017a), and other toxic releases data
from the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) (US EPA, 2017b). The
pollutants and their emission data sources are summarised in
Table 1. As part of compiling emissions data, thorough facility
matching was performed due to different facility identification
numbers from each database, and the matching process was
carried out based on the North American Industry Classifica-
tion System (NAICS) code (e.g. 325120 for hydrogen production),
industry subpart classified by the US EPA (e.g. P for hydrogen pro-
duction), parent company, geographical locations, and detailed
facility information available from the TRI facility report. Location
data (latitude and longitude) of the facilities were also obtained
from the GHGRP which was later imported to ArcGIS (version
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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595
10.8) (Theobald, 2003), and the geographical distribution of SMR
hydrogen facilities with associated environmental impacts was
plotted for each facility. A map layer with the US states bound-
aries in 500k resolution was downloaded from the US Bureau of
the Census (US Bureau of the Census, 2018) and was used as a
base map in ArcGIS. The majority of the selected 33 facilities were
located in three US States, with 13, 9 and 7 facilities in Texas,
Louisiana and California, respectively.
2.3. Environmental impact assessment
The compiled inventories were translated into potential en-
vironmental impacts based on the modelling processes and im-
pact intensity factors defined by the selected impact assessment
method, ReCiPe2016. ReCiPe2016 is one of the most commonly
applied environmental impact assessment methods that trans-
lates emissions into selected environmental impact categories,
such as global warming or freshwater ecotoxicity (Huijbregts
et al., 2017). Inputs of the assessment included pollutant emis-
sions data and annual hydrogen production (see Supplementary
Table 1 for details), and outputs included potential impacts of
the hydrogen production using SMR technology. All inputs were
simulated in OpenLCA software (Ciroth, 2007) (version 1.10.2)
using the ReCiPe2016 hierarchist method, which estimated 12
midpoint and 14 endpoint impacts of each production facility.
No weighing factors were applied to any of the parameters.
Emissions data were categorised as emissions to air and wa-
ter which were imported into OpenLCA accordingly, while se-
lecting low population density. The analysed midpoint impacts
were global warming, fine particulate matter formation, freshwa-
ter ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human carcinogenic/
non-carcinogenic toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, marine eutrophica-
tion, ozone formation- human health, ozone formation- terrestrial
ecosystems, terrestrial acidification and terrestrial ecotoxicity.
2.4. Interpretation
Midpoint impacts are designed to estimate potential environ-
mental impacts resulting from pollutant emissions by quantifying
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595

Fig. 2. Locations of the 33 selected SMR hydrogen facilities with their annual production (tons/year). i. Annual productions are presented as per metric ton per year.
ii. Some facilities have multiple hydrogen production units in one location, and in this case, the productions of two or more units were summed up and presented
as one facility (e.g. PRAXAIR Texas City Hydrogen Complex). iii. Annual production of each facility was estimated based on the production capacity data from PNNL
(PNNL, 2017), and location data was collected from the GHGRP (US EPA, 2020b).

Table 1
Type of collected data and data sources.
Database Pollutant classification Pollutants
Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) Greenhouse gases CO2
CH4
N2 O
National Emissions Inventory (NEI) Criteria Air Pollutants (CAP) Ammonia
CO
NOx
SO2
PM2.5
PM10
VOC
Lead
Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Toxic chemical releases Methanol
Hexane
Nickel
Zinc
Copper
Mercury
Cumene
Database Type of data
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Production capacity (kg/day)

the emissions according to impact intensity factors assigned to
each pollutant. Results of the midpoint impact assessment were
presented using equivalency unit to interpret the emissions as
12 midpoint impact categories. Final damage to human health
and ecosystems was estimated by endpoint impacts expressed as
disability adjusted life years (DALY) and species loss over time
(species yr), respectively.
Results of the impact assessment were imported into Ar-
cGIS with locations and the estimated annual production of each
hydrogen production facility in order to spatially visualise the
impacts on a national-scale US map, while presenting the impacts
based on the functional unit (e.g. kg CO2 equivalent per kg of
produced hydrogen). Among the 12 midpoint impacts, global
warming impacts were presented based on the location of each
hydrogen facility, while the magnitude of the impact was illus-
trated in a quartile range, with different colours representing each
quartile, following the method by Cho and Strezov (2021). Five
endpoint impacts on human health and nine endpoint impacts on
ecosystems were summarised and presented as average impact
values.
As part of the sensitivity analysis, the annual hydrogen pro-
duction efficiency was assumed to increase, while maintaining
the same amount of annual emissions from each SMR facility. 85%
and 90% production efficiency rates were applied for sensitivity
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scenarios S1 and S2 to predict potential impact reductions by
increasing the production efficiency. The potential reductions
in the global warming impacts of hydrogen production were
estimated assuming the methane for SMR hydrogen production
is replaced by biogas produced from anaerobic digestion and
biomass gasification. The emissions and their consequent impacts
of the hydrogen production pathways using renewable sources
were gathered from the literature.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Pollutant emissions from hydrogen production
Pollutant emissions data compiled from the multiple US EPA
databases were converted into per kg of hydrogen by dividing the
total annual emissions (kg/year) by annual hydrogen production
(kg/year). Table 2 presents the emissions of the major pollutants
emitted from the selected 33 SMR hydrogen production facilities.
Among CAP, CO emissions were the highest, followed by NOx,
while the other CAP emissions were insignificant.
Since the emissions from SMR hydrogen production (grey
hydrogen) facilities cannot be completely eliminated, hydrogen
production with carbon capture and storage (also termed blue
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595

Table 2
Emissions of major pollutants from 33 US SMR hydrogen production facilities.
Emission classification Pollutants Average emissionsa (kg/kg H2 ) Minb Maxc Stdd
Greenhouse gases CO2 9.35 4.69 17.31 ±2.34
(GHGs) CH4 2.36E−04 3.83E−06 3.30E−03 ±6.80E−04
Criteria Air Pollutants Ammonia 2.36E−04 1.54E−07 1.97E−03 ±4.36E−04
(CAP) CO 0.27 2.10E−06 8.81 ±1.51
NOx 1.68E−03 1.46E−04 1.43E−02 ±3.29E−03
SO2 1.00E−04 1.33E−06 3.19E−03 ±5.46E−04
PM2.5 4.44E−04 1.35E−06 8.94E−03 ±1.53E−03
PM10 5.35E−04 1.39E−05 8.98E−03 ±1.55E−03
VOC 9.01E−04 3.18E−05 2.36E−02 ±4.05E−03
Lead 5.07E−08 4.86E−10 1.27E−06 ±2.21E−07
Other toxic releases Methanol 2.14E−05 8.06E−09 1.15E−04 ±3.49E−05
a
These numbers indicate average emission values of the selected 33 SMR hydrogen production facilities.
b
Minimum emission values (excluding zero emissions) of the selected 33 SMR hydrogen production facilities.
c
Maximum emission values of the selected 33 SMR hydrogen production facilities.
d
Standard deviation of each pollutant emissions from the selected 33 SMR hydrogen production facilities.

hydrogen) has been introduced as one of the solutions for mit- Table 3
igating overall emissions from the production (Roussanaly et al., Average midpoint impacts of US SMR hydrogen facilities (expressed as per kg
of hydrogen).
2020). Although the adoption of carbon capture and storage (CCS)
Impact category Impact value Unit
to SMR facilities exhibits positive impact reductions by capturing
CO2 from flue gas with capture rate ranging between 80%–82% Global warming 9.35 kg CO2 eq
Fine particulate matter formation 7.14E−04 kg PM2.5 eq
(Antonini et al., 2020), additional energy requirement and cor- Freshwater ecotoxicity 3.12E−08 kg 1,4-DCB
responding operating costs are other factors that need to be Freshwater eutrophication – kg P eq
considered (Zhou et al., 2021). It has been reported that overall Human carcinogenic toxicity 1.46E−02 kg 1,4-DCB
CO2 emissions from natural gas SMR systems decrease by about Human non-carcinogenic toxicity 1.52E−03 kg 1,4-DCB
Marine ecotoxicity 6.13E−06 kg 1,4-DCB
90% when implementing CCS when compared with SMR systems
Marine eutrophication – kg N eq
without CCS (Roussanaly et al., 2020). Despite this emission re- Ozone formation, Human health 1.68E−03 kg NOx eq
duction advantage of CCS, only one US SMR facility (Air Products Ozone formation, Terrestrial ecosystems 1.68E−03 kg NOx eq
Port Arthur hydrogen plant in Texas) has adopted CCS which is Terrestrial acidification 1.17E−03 kg SO2 eq
one of the four SMR facilities in the world that apply CCS for Terrestrial ecotoxicity 3.28E−03 kg 1,4-DCB

CO2 emission reduction at hydrogen production plants. The other

three plants are located in France, Canada and Japan (FCHO, 2020;
Global CCS Institute, 2020; IEAGHG, 2017; IEA, 2021a). As of 2020,
41 projects are under way to apply CCS in hydrogen production
from natural gas (IEA, 2021a).
3.2. Midpoint impacts of US SMR hydrogen facilities
Midpoint impact assessment was performed according to the
12 impact categories summarised in Table 3 to understand path-
ways and direct effects of pollutant emissions from the hydrogen
production facilities. The global warming impacts estimated in
this work were 9.35 kg CO2 eq/kg H2 attributed mainly to the
emissions of CO2 , while the remaining 0.02% of the impacts were
due to CH4 emissions. Only 33% of the selected 33 SMR facilities
reported CH4 emissions from their processes. A similar trend
was found in the study by Alhamdani et al. (2017) who re-
ported almost negligible contribution of CH4 emissions to global
warming impact despite the inclusion of fugitive CH4 emissions,
which was the major source of CH4 emissions in their analysis.
In contrast, Spath and Mann (2001) estimated 10.6% of global
warming impacts attributed to the emissions of CH4 . Differences
in these two studies could be explained by different system
boundaries. Fugitive CH4 emissions mainly occur during natural
gas production processes, including gas extraction and transport
(Spath and Mann, 2001), thus inclusion of these processes into
the system boundary led to much higher contribution rate of CH4
emissions to global warming impact in Spath and Mann (2001)
than the study by Alhamdani et al. (2017). Inclusion of fugitive
methane emissions is particularly important when 20 year time
horizon is applied to the impact assessment because of relatively
short atmospheric lifetime of methane (e.g. 12 years) (Stocker
et al., 2014). There have also been claims that methane emissions
from fossil fuel-based hydrogen production could be similar to
13589
those of conventional natural gas-based energy production (Bauer
et al., 2022). Therefore, efforts should be made to control fugitive
methane emissions from hydrogen production.
As presented in Fig. 3, global warming impact, expressed on
per kg of produced hydrogen, of each SMR facility varies, with
the states of Texas and Louisiana (Fig. 3-b) contributing to most
of the impacts due to the large number of facilities located in
these two states. The facility with the highest global warming
impact is found in Texas (Air Products Port Arthur Facility, see
Supplementary Table 1 for details) because of the higher methane
emissions.
3.3. Endpoint impacts of US SMR hydrogen facilities
Endpoint impacts estimate the final damage on human health
and ecosystems based on the 12 midpoint categories, while ap-
plying different impact intensity factors assigned to each pollu-
tant. Table 4 summarises average endpoint impacts of the 33 US
SMR hydrogen production facilities with the global warming im-
pact on human health found to be the major contributing factor to
total endpoint impacts on human health. Fine particulate matter
formation impact, mainly caused by the emissions of particulate
matter and sulphur dioxide, was the second highest but with
significantly lower impact than global warming. The rest of the
human health impacts were almost negligible. Global warming
impact on terrestrial ecosystems was the highest among the nine
endpoint impact categories on ecosystems, but all ecosystem
impacts were negligible compared to global warming impacts on
human health.
Both mid and endpoint impacts are complementary and pro-
vide robustness in understanding environmental performances
from major causes to final damages on the very end of impact
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595

Fig. 3. Global warming impact of 33 US SMR hydrogen production facilities; (a) Facilities in California with their impacts, (b) Facilities in Texas and Louisiana with
their impacts.

Table 4
Average endpoint impacts of US SMR hydrogen facilities (expressed as per kg of hydrogen)
Impact category Impact value Unit
Fine particulate matter formation 4.49E−07 DALY
Global warming, Human health 8.67E−06 DALY
Impacts on human health Human carcinogenic toxicity 4.87E−08 DALY
Human non-carcinogenic toxicity 3.45E−10 DALY
Ozone formation, Human health 1.53E−09 DALY

Freshwater ecotoxicity 2.17E−17 species yr

Freshwater eutrophication – species yr
Global warming, Freshwater ecosystems 7.15E−13 species yr
Global warming, Terrestrial ecosystems 2.62E−08 species yr
Impacts on ecosystems Marine ecotoxicity 6.45E−16 species yr
Marine eutrophication – species yr
Ozone formation, Terrestrial ecosystems 2.17E−10 species yr
Terrestrial acidification 2.48E−10 species yr
Terrestrial ecotoxicity 3.74E−14 species yr

pathways (Hauschild and Huijbregts, 2015). Endpoint impacts
are considered to better interpret damages on the areas of pro-
tection (e.g. human health and ecosystems) by presenting the
impacts using numeric points (Hajjaji et al., 2013; Mehmeti et al.,
2018). Some studies performed single level of impact assessment,
mainly at a midpoint level, without considering the ultimate im-
pacts on multiple environmental pathways (Bareiß et al., 2019).
A study by Hajjaji et al. (2013) estimated endpoint impacts of
conventional SMR hydrogen production using Eco-indicator 99
method by comparing the impacts to alternative hydrogen pro-
duction processes including renewable hydrogen. The impacts
were presented using numeric environmental penalty scores with
larger number of scores indicating higher environmental impacts.
Hydrogen production via SMR technology using natural gas and
biomethane produced by anaerobic digestion (AD) of cattle ma-
nure had positive and negative scores, respectively. The difference
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of the scores was attributed to the consumption of methane for
hydrogen production in the form of fossil methane (natural gas)
and biomethane, respectively.
3.4. Sensitivity analysis
Sensitivity analysis was performed to confirm how changes
in production efficiency influence the potential impacts. Pro-
duction efficiency is also identified in other studies as a key
parameter with major influence on emissions intensities (Zhou
et al., 2021). The base case used in this study assumed 80%
production efficiency at full production capacity reported by the
PNNL (2017), and the sensitivity scenarios assumed increasing
efficiencies to 85% and 90% of the full capacity. Conventional
SMR hydrogen production has been reported to have overall
production efficiency ranging between 74%–85% (Nikolaidis and
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans
Table 5
Potential reduction in impacts by increasing production efficiency.
Global warming impact
(kg CO2 eq/kg H2 )
Endpoint impacts on human health
(DALY)
Endpoint impacts on ecosystems
(species yr)
Poullikkas, 2017) with the potential of achieving higher efficiency
by installing palladium alloy membrane to the production system,
which facilitates lowering the reaction temperature from 800–
900 ◦ C to 500–550 ◦ C (Barelli et al., 2008). Other studies assumed
up to 90% of full capacity (Spath and Mann, 2001), thus 85%
and 90% production efficiencies were applied in the sensitivity
analysis. As shown in Table 5, when the production efficiency
increased from 80% to 85% and 90%, overall impacts decreased
by 5.9% and 11.1%, respectively.
Valente et al. (2021) pointed out on the importance of im-
proving process efficiency for achieving better environmental,
social and economic performances of various hydrogen produc-
tion technologies. In 2020, 41.3 million metric tons (MMT) of
GHGs were emitted from 114 US SMR hydrogen production facil-
ities which contributed to 23.2% of the total GHG emissions from
the US chemical sector (US EPA, 2020a). It can be expected that
about 2.4 MMT of GHG emissions could be reduced by increasing
the production efficiency by 5%.
3.5. Scenario analysis
Hydrogen can be produced from fossil or renewable sources
through various production pathways. Waste-based hydrogen
production through anaerobic digestion (AD), which involves
production of biogas from various sources, including animal ma-
nure, crop residues, sewage sludge and landfill gas (Hajjaji et al.,
2016; Zhou et al., 2021). These pathways can be technologically
viable, although no large scale production is available yet. These
technologies are valuable in turning waste materials into value-
added energy products, also referred to as biogas, biomethane or
renewable natural gas, which can substitute the use of natural gas
in many industrial processes with minor technological modifica-
tions while reducing GHG emissions (Gas Technology Institute,
2019). Hydrogen produced from biogas and fossil fuel sources
is promising because it can be blended with natural gas and
distributed through the existing natural gas pipelines (Quintino
et al., 2021). However, risks of embrittlement present during the
hydrogen-blended gas transmission, especially when hydrogen is
blended at high concentration with high pressure, therefore nat-
ural gas pipeline materials, age and pressure threshold should be
assessed before gas blending (Quintino et al., 2021). According to
Gondal (2019) and Quintino et al. (2021), hydrogen concentration
between 2%–15% can be blended with natural gas with negligible
impacts on the blended gas quality.
Since the choice of feedstock greatly affects the final impacts
of hydrogen production (Susmozas et al., 2013), hypothetical
scenarios were developed to estimate potential reductions in
the impacts by assuming replacement of hydrogen production
feedstock (SMR feed) from natural gas with renewable sources.
Various hydrogen production technologies and their environmen-
tal performances were gathered from literature and compared
with the estimated global warming impacts of this study. The
hydrogen production pathways and the system boundaries of the
studies used in the scenario analysis are presented in Fig. 4
and Table 6, respectively. Considering the data collected from
Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595
Production efficiency
80% (Base case) 85% (scenario S1) 90% (scenario S2)
9.35 8.80 8.31
(−5.9%) (−11.1%)
9.17E−06 8.63E−06 8.15E−06
2.66E−08 2.51E−08 2.37E−08
the literature applied full life cycle assessment of hydrogen pro-
duction using renewable energy sources and included emissions
related to production of the renewable energy sources, in order
to compare the results from the literature with the current study,
emissions from extraction and transport of natural gas were
included in the comparison. GHG emissions from extraction and
transport of natural gas were derived from NETL (2014) and were
estimated at 1.87 kg CO2 eq/kg H2 . This estimate assumes the
average emissions of 0.164 kg CO2 /kg natural gas and 0.0125 kg
CH4 /kg of natural gas and considering 3.18 kg of natural gas is
required to produce 1 kg of hydrogen (Susmozas et al., 2013).
The average GHG emissions for a full life cycle of hydrogen
production from SMR of the natural gas facilities located in USA
are estimated at 11.2 kg CO2−e /kg H2 . This result is somewhat
lower than the estimated 12.13 kg CO2 eq/kg H2 using com-
mercially available Ecoinvent database (Mehmeti et al., 2018)
but similar to the study by Valente et al. (2021) who assumed
85% efficiency at full production capacity in their SMR hydrogen
production case study with an estimate of 11.43 kg CO2 eq/kg H2 .
Table 7 provides an estimate for the potential of reducing the
GHG emissions on a full life cycle basis by replacing natural gas
with renewable energy sources. Replacing natural gas with land-
fill gas for SMR hydrogen production showed reduction potential
in global warming impact by 68.2%. Lower global warming impact
of landfill gas-hydrogen production cases could be explained as
avoided emissions during biogas production through on-site pro-
duction without involving transport of biogas to hydrogen plants
as well as avoided flaring at the landfill (Yoo et al., 2018). Replace-
ment of fossil fuel use for heat generation required during SMR
processes with supplying the heat energy using the produced bio-
gas can also contribute to impact reduction (Di Marcoberardino
et al., 2019).
In case of hydrogen production from waste-derived
biomethane (e.g. animal manure-derived biomethane), assump-
tions made on methane leakage rate during biomethane pro-
duction were found to be the key parameter, which, in some
cases, could result in worse global warming impacts than natural
gas SMR hydrogen production system (Zhou et al., 2021). The
reviewed waste-based hydrogen production cases concluded that
biogas production process was the most impactful and strongly
affected by raw materials (e.g. cattle manure) and anaerobic
digestion applied to produce the biogas (Hajjaji et al., 2013). To
a lesser extent, inclusion of plant construction and decommis-
sioning processes into system boundaries led to slightly higher
global warming impacts (Hajjaji et al., 2016). Use of digestate,
the by-product of biogas production, as an agricultural fertiliser
can ultimately lead to lower overall impacts, particularly for
lower eutrophication impact through the substitution of mineral
fertilisers by the digestate (Hajjaji et al., 2013).
The greatest impact reduction was found in hydrogen pro-
duction by biomass gasification with average reduction of 78.1%
(Table 7), although the potential reductions were found to be af-
fected by types of biomass, fossil energy use during biomass pro-
duction (e.g. diesel use by agricultural machinery), biomass trans-
port and pre-treatment process of the biomass (Mehmeti et al.,
13591
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595

Table 6
Life cycle stages included in each scenario.
Feedstock Life cycle Reference
First stage Final stage
LFG recovery and supply H2 production Di Marcoberardino et al. (2019)
Landfill gas (LFG) LFG recovery and supply H2 production Yoo et al. (2018)
LFG recovery and supply (CH4 leakage)a H2 production Zhou et al. (2021)
Biogas Biomethane (ADb of animal manure) Manure collection H2 productiond Hajjaji et al. (2016)
Biomethane (AD of animal manure) Biogas supply (1% CH4 leakage) H2 production Zhou et al. (2021)
Biomethane (ATRc of animal manure) Manure collection H2 production Spath and Mann (2001)
Biomass Corn stover Biomass collection (pre-treatment) H2 production Siddiqui and Dincer (2019)
Corn stover Biomass production (transport) H2 production Mehmeti et al. (2018)
Forest residue (unspecified) Biomass production H2 production Zhou et al. (2021)
Poplar Biomass production (transport) H2 production Susmozas et al. (2013)
Forest residue (spruce, willow) Biomass production (pre-treatment) H2 production Wulf and Kaltschmitt (2013)
Poplar Biomass production (harvest, transport) H2 production Iribarren et al. (2014)
a
1% of methane leakage rate was assumed in their analysis.
b
AD: anaerobic digestion.
c
ATR: auto thermal reforming.
d
Commissioning and decommissioning of hydrogen plant were included in the life cycle.

Table 7
Potential reduction in global warming impact by replacement of natural gas with renewable sources.
Hydrogen production technology Global warming impact Percentage
(kg CO2 eq/kg H2 ) change
Steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas (this study) 9.35
Production of natural gas extraction and transport 1.87
Full LCA for SMR of natural gas 11.22
SMR of landfill gasa 3.57 −68.2%
SMR of biomethane (produced from animal manure)b 5.20 −53.7%
Biomass gasificationc 2.46 −78.1%
a
Average value was calculated based on Di Marcoberardino et al. (2019), Yoo et al. (2018) and Zhou et al. (2021).
b
Average value was calculated based on Hajjaji et al. (2016), Spath and Mann (2001) and Zhou et al. (2021).
c
Average value was calculated based on Iribarren et al. (2014), Mehmeti et al. (2018), Siddiqui and Dincer (2019),
Susmozas et al. (2013), Wulf and Kaltschmitt (2013), and Zhou et al. (2021).

2018; Susmozas et al., 2013; Wulf and Kaltschmitt, 2013). Accord-
ing to Safari et al. (2016) higher cellulose content in biomass feed-
stock could have higher hydrogen yield in shorter reaction time,
while reducing particle size of biomass through a pre-treatment
process could yield to higher hydrogen production (Luo et al.,
2009). Although sequestration of CO2 during biomass cultivation
provides favourable environmental performance by compensat-
ing most of the global warming impacts, fertiliser application
and diesel consumption by machinery are reported to lead to
considerable acidification and eutrophication impacts (Susmozas
et al., 2013; Wulf and Kaltschmitt, 2013), indicating no single
environmental indicator is sufficient when estimating potential
impacts of the whole process of biomass-based hydrogen pro-
duction pathway. In some extreme cases, acidification impact of
biomass gasification is found to be worse than natural gas SMR
hydrogen system, while pre-treatment of biomass (e.g. drying and
chopping) and electricity generation for plant operation largely
compensate the reduced global warming impact by the biomass
cultivation (Susmozas et al., 2013). Although biomass require-
ments for hydrogen production are highly affected by the type of
biomass, current practices of biomass-based hydrogen production
require about 13.5–36.3 kg of biomass to produce 1 kg of hydro-
gen (Susmozas et al., 2013; Wulf and Kaltschmitt, 2013; Iribarren
et al., 2014; Mehmeti et al., 2018) with gasification efficiency
ranging between 19%–48% (Iribarren et al., 2014; Susmozas et al.,
2013). The production efficiency is another factor that influences
the impacts. Mehmeti et al. (2018) reported higher production
efficiency (calculated by the amount of biomass requirements to
produce unit of hydrogen) but resulted in worse global warming
impact, whereas Susmozas et al. (2013) reported the opposite
with a lower efficiency and better global warming impact. The
use of char and flue gas in combustion for heat supply rather
13592
than from external energy source may explain this difference
(Susmozas et al., 2013). Thus, improvement in biomass cultivation
practices, including reduced use of fertilisers and diesel as well
as establishment of self-sustained energy supply system for gasi-
fication processes by providing required energy using biogas are
suggested to reduce overall environmental impacts. Considering
the supply of biomass for hydrogen production contributes to
more than 50% of overall production cost (Binder et al., 2018) and
land requirement for biomass production, these factors should
be evaluated when assessing the feasibility of biomass-based
hydrogen production (Zhou et al., 2021). Final cost of renewable
hydrogen production by wind-powered electrolysis is reported
at USD $5.3–$8 per kg of hydrogen, solar-powered electrolysis is
between $3.4–$16, while biomass-based hydrogen has the cost
ranging between $2.2–$7. In contrast, the cost of fossil fuel-based
hydrogen ranges between $0.9–$1.9 for hydrogen by coal gasifi-
cation and $1–$3.5 by SMR (El-Emam and Özcan, 2019; Hosseini
and Wahid, 2016; Safari and Dincer, 2020), thus higher cost of
renewable hydrogen will need to be addressed to expand the fu-
ture production. Other challenges of renewable hydrogen include
low production efficiency and unstable supply of process energy,
particularly for wind- and solar-powered electrolysis (Hosseini
and Wahid, 2016; Olabi et al., 2021), while higher emissions from
fossil fuel-based hydrogen could be a limitation for its continuous
production (Valente et al., 2021).
4. Conclusions
This study utilised facility-level emissions data provided by
the US EPA for estimating the environmental impacts of 33 stand-
alone US hydrogen production facilities with SMR technology. The
H.H. Cho, V. Strezov and T.J. Evans
Fig. 4. Renewable hydrogen production pathways used in the scenario analysis; (a) Hydrogen production via SMR using biogas Reproduced based on Siddiqui and
Dincer (2019), Wulf and Kaltschmitt (2013) and Zhou et al. (2021), (b) Hydrogen production via biomass gasification.
major greenhouse gas emissions were dominated by the emis-
sions of CO2 which contributed to 99.8% of the global warming
impact with the impact values of 9.35 kg CO2 e/kg H2 based on the
analysis of direct facility-level emissions, while 11.2 kg CO2 e/kg
H2 form a life cycle perspective. The impact was concentrated
in the two US States, Texas and Louisiana, with 22 out of the
33 hydrogen facilities located in these two states. The dominant
CO2 emissions among the pollutants resulted in global warming
impact on human health and on terrestrial ecosystems being the
most impactful categories among the endpoint impacts.
Production efficiency is one of the key parameters that affect
the overall impacts. Increasing the production efficiency by 5%
and 10% would result in potential reduction in global warm-
ing impact by 5.9% and 11.1%, respectively. It is expected that
increasing the efficiency by 5% can reduce 2.4 MMT of GHG
emissions from the US hydrogen sector alone. Higher efficiencies
could be achieved by adopting membrane reactors to the SMR
hydrogen production processes by reducing the reaction temper-
ature (Nikolaidis and Poullikkas, 2017). However, the efficiency
is correlated with SMR feed supply, and cost for the SMR feed
contributes about 29% of the total hydrogen production cost, thus
changes in overall production cost should also be investigated
when considering higher efficiencies for hydrogen production
(Nikolaidis and Poullikkas, 2017).
Reductions in the impacts are also projected when natural
gas is substituted by renewable sources. Hydrogen production via
biomass gasification showed the greatest reduction potential of
78.1% in the global warming impact when compared with the
impact of natural gas SMR hydrogen production, while SMR using
landfill gas and biomethane were found to achieve 68.2% and
53.7% reductions, respectively. The yield of hydrogen production
and its consequent impacts are highly influenced by the choice
of feedstock, conversion technologies and production efficien-
cies. Increasing process efficiencies while minimising the fossil
feedstock requirements will be beneficial for increasing hydrogen
production with reduced environmental impacts.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Hannah Hyunah Cho: Conceptualization, Data curation, For-
mal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing
13593
Energy Reports 8 (2022) 13585–13595
– original draft. Vladimir Strezov: Conceptualization, Data cura-
tion, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Su-
pervision, Writing – review & editing. Tim J. Evans: Conceptu-
alization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources,
Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal
relationships which may be considered as potential competing
interests: Tim Evans reports a relationship with Rio Tinto Iron Ore
Pty Ltd that includes: employment.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found
online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.10.053.
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