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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 836–844

www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

7th International Conference on Advances on Clean Energy Research, ICACER 2022 April
20–22, 2022, Barcelona, Spain

Techno-economic analysis of recently improved hydrogen production

pathway and infrastructure
M.A. Hazrat, M.G. Rasul ∗, M.I. Jahirul, Ashfaque Ahmed Chowdhury, N.M.S. Hassan
Fuel and Energy Research Group, School of Engineering and Technology, Central Queensland University, Queensland 4702, Australia
Received 26 December 2022; accepted 27 December 2022
Available online 3 January 2023

Abstract
The objective of this study is to identify the techno-economic factors for the recent hydrogen production pathways and their
relevant infrastructures so that the costs reported in the recent articles be easily identified for further analysis. The comparison of
the levelised cost of hydrogen production (LCOH) from the steam reforming process and renewable electricity-based electrolysis
processes has shown that process efficiency improvement, feedstock price and requirement of scaling up of newer investments
are the key areas of attention. Very efficient technical development is yet to implement to offer LCOH of less than 2 USD/kg
H2 from any of these technologies along with carbon capture and storage (CCS) or scaling up the low-cost renewable electricity
facilities. To facilitate rapid growth in development, the LCOH reported by one project can turn into input to another project of
the supply chain system through following common standards. Scaling-up is also essential as the industries requiring more than
100 tonnes of H2 per day can be benefited from integrating the solar PV, grid excess electricity and CCS coupled electricity
generation from fossil fuels if the identified techno-economic barriers are solved based on the targeted LCOH. Lower LCOH will
encourage the end-users to adopt the newer technology for energy production, which will effectively manage the environmental
sustainability targets.
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 7th International Conference on Advances on Clean Energy Research, ICACER,
2022.

Keywords: Techno-economic analysis; LCOH; GHG emission reduction; Green hydrogen; Electrolysers; Steam reforming

1. Introduction
Hydrogen (H2 ) is considered as prospective future paradigm for renewable energy supply, which can play most
important role for low-carbon economics alongside electricity. Combustion of fossil fuels for energy production
has been the most significant contribution to the development of civilisation through industrial revolution. Apart
from the global development due to the rapid increase in consumption and production of fossil fuels in the form of
gaseous, solid, or liquid substances there is increased environment pollution due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: m.rasul@cqu.edu.au (M.G. Rasul).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.12.148
2352-4847/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 7th International Conference on Advances on Clean Energy Research,
ICACER, 2022.
M.A. Hazrat, M.G. Rasul, M.I. Jahirul et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 836–844

[1]. The key sources of GHG are categorised within energy (73.2%), industrial processes (5.2%), wastes (3.2%)
and agriculture, forestry, land use (AFOLU) (18.4%) [2]. However, the production gap report [1] has reported
that the fossil fuel production could increase about 50% by 2030 than that of 2015 which will certainly challenge
the goals of mitigating global warming effects. The necessity of energy production from fossil fuels can never be
neglected, but the threat of increasing the overall global warming by 1.5 ◦ C above the pre-industrial level within
2040 has urged technological advancement for transforming the emission intensive energy sources into limited or
net zero emission sources [3,4].
As of April 2021, the European Union (EU-27) and 44 other countries have announced the net zero emission
(NZE) pledge at various levels of implementation stages [5,6]. Most of the countries have targeted to achieve
global net zero CO2 emission and global GHG emissions by 2050 and 2067 by implementing individual and
cooperative emissions reduction plans [7]. Massive infrastructure development goal needs to be achieved by all the
countries to produce cleaner and renewable energy sources along with emission removal from their respective key
emission producing sectors [5–7]. Though envisioned [8], due to diversity of application of the fossil fuels and
optimistic new zero emission target to keep the global warming effect at a sustainable status, it is impossible to just
replace the fossil fuels completely within next three decades. The challenges are the total costs and time required
for reliable technology development, and massive infrastructure transformation for cleaner energy production,
storage, transport, and a complete change of technical as well as behavioural adaptability in the consumer side
that will be using the cleaner energy instead of the fossil fuels [8,9]. This transition for global and national levels
needs to be highly sustainable in terms of overall costs in comparison to the available emission intensive energy
sources for successful achievement of the NZE goals [5,10]. Hydrogen has been used for various industries as
raw materials, especially, space industry, petroleum and steel refining, analytical reagent, hydrogenation, fertiliser,
ammonia, peroxide, alcohol, and semiconductor production [11]. But the necessity of sustainable energy transition
and diversity of production processes from various sources have reintroduced this as a fuel for almost each of the
energy consuming sectors [5,8–10,12]. That is why, hydrogen is considered as a global energy vector for future
economic establishment [13,14].
While current demand of hydrogen production does not necessarily capture the emissions from the production
processes that use the non-renewable sources as feedstock [15], it will be highly necessary to capture, and
sequestrate the emissions to claim it as a greener fuel as well as produce in a massive scale worldwide. At present,
the feedstocks used for hydrogen production purposes are liquified fossil fuels (30%), natural gas (48%), coal
(18%), and renewable sources (4%) [15]. On the other hand, production costs (USD/kg of H2 ) from various
processes are, pyrolysis (1.47–2.57), steam reforming (1.25–3.5), gasification (0.93–2.83), photolysis (1.84–2.27),
dark fermentation (1.02–2.7), and water electrolysis (3.01–4.51) [15]. Total cost of ownership (TCO) for the
consumers can vary further than these values by using various technical infrastructure set-ups and there is much
prospect of lowering the TCO to below 2 USD/kg of H2 with the expansion of reliable infrastructure establishment
to meet the global project demand of hydrogen from 90 Mt (million tonnes) in 2020 to more than 530 Mt in 2050
[5,16]. Besides, in order to achieve the NZE goals by 2050 global annual capital investment can rise up to $4 trillion
USD for clean energy purpose [5], which certainly demands efficient techno-economic outputs. Due to different
types of technologies for hydrogen production, level of commercial scalability, and handling activities, the overall
comparison is performed based on the overall cost of production of hydrogen per kg in each of the technology
systems, known as the levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) [17], using the respective techniques.
In this study, a brief review is reported on techno-economic comparison between steam reforming and electrolysis
processes based on the LCOH parameter for hydrogen production. While comparing the LCOH parameter for
hydrogen production, key players for infrastructure development for the decarbonised thermochemical processing
and electrolysis process have been summarised. It will benefit the policy makers to adopt optimal routes to make use
of feedstocks, technologies and investment capacity while choosing the hydrogen economy pathway for sustainable
environment.

2. Hydrogen production pathways

About 96% of the produced hydrogen is used for ammonia, methanol production and petroleum refinery purposes
even though the global hydrogen production capacity has been increased beyond 90 Mt [18]. The most common
processes are the steam reforming as well as gasification processes followed by water–gas shift (WGS) reaction
process, which use more than 6% and 2% of global natural gas and coal, respectively, to produce hydrogen for
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mostly industrial applications [19]. These processes are also responsible to emit more than 900 Mt of carbon
dioxide (CO2) globally [18,19]. Therefore, the objective of producing hydrogen from the fossil fuel or organic
feedstocks for NZE goals essentially requires additional technology (carbon capture, utilisation & sequestration,
CCUS) to remove the emission contents [18]. Traditional hydrogen production technologies that are incorporated
with reliable, efficient, and economic capture and utilisation or storage (CCUS) process to produce cleaner hydrogen
(Blue hydrogen) [20].
On the other hand, the water electrolysis process that requires electrical energy to produce hydrogen offers
both positive and negative motivation towards NZE goals. If the electricity is produced following the European
Environmental Agency’s (EEA) regulation then the carbon footprint is observed as equivalent to 60%–70% CCS
integrated steam reforming from natural gas for hydrogen production, but the current global average CO2 emission
for electricity generation may lead to triple quantity of carbon footprint for electrolysis process than that of the
emission from steam reforming of natural gas without any CCS process integration [18]. For sustainable scale up
of the hydrogen production through electrolysis process, it is essential to produce cleaner electricity at a lower cost
than that of current conditions [21]. When it comes to the application of hydrogen in the transport and energy
industries as fuel, it is to be cost competitive until the consumer end along with net zero emission capability to
compete with the existing fossil fuel-based energy production system. Renewable electricity (i.e., wind and solar
energy), excess grid electricity and nuclear power can be used to produce cleaner hydrogen (i.e., green hydrogen)
by the electrolysis processes. According to IEA [18,19], global green hydrogen or low-carbon hydrogen production
capability from electrolysis process has been recorded about 0.36 Mt/year in 2019 which has been projected to be
grown up to 8.3 Mt/year by 2030 due to scaling up of electrolysis projects, though the 2050 NZE goal requires
about 80 Mt of hydrogen production capability by 2030 to achieve the sustainability development scenario (SDS).
Growing cleaner electricity demand in order to cease the ongoing electricity production capacities based on the
fossil fuels at an economic rate is another barrier for this low share of green hydrogen production as well [19].

Fig. 1. Hydrogen production pathways for major hydrogen production facilities around the world.
Source: Adapted from [22–24].

Typical pathways of hydrogen production along with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) are shown
in Fig. 1 [22–24]. This figure shows that the fossil fuels and the biofuels can be converted into hydrogen by at least
two processes after being refined from their crude status, which are steam reforming/gasification followed by the
WGS reaction process. To justify the hydrogen product for emission reduction by the sources which consume these
fuels for energy production, the CCS must be incorporated to produce cleaner hydrogen. On the other hand, the solar,
wind, hydro, and the nuclear energy must be converted into renewable electricity using relevant technology, which
is used to split water to produce green hydrogen. Another sustainable process of CO2 free hydrogen production
pathway from natural gas or hydrocarbons is the catalytic thermal decomposition in which the feedstocks are
decomposed into hydrogen gas and solid carbon material (coke). With the use of carbon-based catalysts, this process
has overcome the expense and reduction of catalytic effectiveness of metal-based catalysts due to production of
coke from the process. Lesser energy consumption and atmospheric pressure conditions are also the favourable
features of catalytic thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons like natural gas [25]. Kvaerner technology-based plasma
torch system of thermal decomposition (i.e., pyrolysis) has demonstrated technology readiness level (TRL) of 8
among various cracking processes of hydrogen production [25]. This cracking process may occur in multiple stages
while producing other hydrocarbons [26], which needs to be tackled efficiently to industrially adopt this process
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for hydrogen production. There are few biological processes for hydrogen production [27]. These processes may
be of time consuming and still require integration of CCS technologies. There is no single process for hydrogen
production. Among wide variation of feedstocks resources of hydrogen by using various production processes the
most economically competitive process in comparison to the current energy mix has the potential to be willingly
adopted by the consumers at a mass level.
The objective of achieving a real net-zero global environment within next three decades requires rapid and
massive transformation of all the CO2 emitting sources into green and blue hydrogen facilities [28]. So, the techno-
economic challenge in establishing an efficient hydrogen supply chain requires not only economic production of
green and blue hydrogen but also an economic technical solution for storage, transmission, and delivery to the
customers. With an extended point of view, the users of hydrogen energy may not be eager to spend more for
converting hydrogen into useable energy as per their requirement. For instance, a customer who is buying fossil
fuel driven car may not be eagerly opting for the fuel cell vehicle (FCV) unless it is cost competitive with the existing
vehicle prices. It is high time to analyse the cost of establishment of hydrogen infrastructure, consumers’ expenses,
relevant technologies, challenges, and pathways to overcome these barriers to implement a sustainable development
scenario for actual capacity of achieving the goal by 2050 and beyond [5]. By using hydrogen only in the areas
where direct electricity supply is challenging (e.g., metal processing, ship propulsion, and aviation industries) and
extending electricity’s reach to more of the energy consuming sectors can narrow down the global attention for
technology options as well as rapid development of these technologies. Growth of renewable electricity production
capacity in various countries around the world and reduced cost of green hydrogen production technologies within
last decade have encouraged setting up the goal for net-zero emission [5,9,18,21].

3. Levelised Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) production (electrolysis & reforming processes)

The levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) production is the cost per unit quantity of hydrogen production which
is derived from Eq. (1) [29]. Here, the annualised capital repayment (ACR) is a function of capital expenditures
(CAPEX), the weighted average cost of the invested capital, and effective economic life of the installed system or
infrastructure for hydrogen production.
(AC R + AO MC)
LC O H = (1)
(A P H )
where, AOMC is annual operating and maintenance costs and APH is annual hydrogen production.
Continuous development for low-cost green and blue hydrogen production technologies are of high priority. An
overall production cost of green hydrogen greatly depends on factors such as the size of the investment, the cost of
generating electricity from renewable sources, the technology related to electrolysis, total annual operation hours, the
payback period, and the level of distribution [30]. In terms of the fossil fuel to hydrogen production by the reforming
process, the cost of processing the fossil fuels, efficient reforming, and CCS technology replace the cost of renewable
electricity and the electrolysis technologies in Eq. (1). Due to the global recognition of hydrogen fuel-based energy
economy and integration of CCS to abate the global warming crises, there has been a continuous development of
the prospective technologies, which is also reflected through the economic projections each year [31,32].
A recent report [33] from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the USA has summarised
that the energy input from various resources to produce 1 kg of hydrogen (LHV: 120 MJ/kg) by steam methane
reforming (SMR), gasification, high-energy electrolysis, low-temperature electrolysis processes are usually 165 MJ
from natural gas or biomethane, 225 MJ from coal or 242 MJ from biomass, 240 MJ from nuclear energy, and 185
MJ from renewable resources like wind, solar, hydro and geothermal energy, respectively. The energy content from
fossil fuels was considered to be lower heating value (LHV) of the fuel resources and necessary data were used
from the hydrogen analysis (H2A) model [34] of the Department of Energy (DOE) of the USA, which is a very
efficient tool for LCOH analysis.
Hydrogen production technologies are usually projected to lead reduction in LCOH in every 5–10 years of time
than the previous period, but the recent changes are very frequent due to highly prioritised targets which should be
achieved by 2050 [31,32,35]. Investment scale-up, return of investment, and operation-maintenance expenses are
the key challenging factors for successful establishment of hydrogen production facilities at a planned level; but the
cost of storage, transport, and dispensing are still very high, that must be reduced with the relevant development
to attain a successful hydrogen economy [15,36]. The cost of handling and delivery of hydrogen can be more
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than the production costs [37]. Therefore, there should be a clear idea of using the term ‘LCOH’ to conduct the
techno-economic comparison among the options for hydrogen infrastructure development, i.e., whether the LCOH
is used to express the hydrogen value chain from feedstock to production including CCS (LCOHprod ) or until it is
delivered to the users (LCOHdlvd ) [37]. In this study, LCOHprod is presented as LCOH. The cost of handling and
delivering hydrogen can be higher than the cost of production. Cihlar et al. [37] demonstrated with case study that
though LCOHprod can vary from 69–130 Euro2019/MWh H2 (LHV), the total hydrogen supply chain can make
the LCOHdlvd ranging from 115–335 Euro2019/MWh H2 (LHV). Demir and Dincer [38] analysed three different
scenarios of hydrogen energy distribution with H2A model along with GREET database and MACRS depreciation
schemes that showed LCOHdlvd to be USD8.02/kgH2 (for liquified hydrogen), USD2.86/kgH2 (small scale gaseous)
and USD2.73/kgH2 (large scale gaseous) respectively. The large-scale delivery system also emitted least amount of
CO2 from the delivery supply chain system. Highly optimised and lower LCOH is required to avoid financial burden
in the global GDP growth by 2050 as there is a projection of about 78 EJ hydrogen production capacity to keep
global warming temperature increase up to +2 ◦ C by this period with significant reduction of CO2 from various
emission producing sectors [39]. Fig. 2 summarises the interlink among actions and achievements for sustainable
energy and environment based on the information reviewed.

Fig. 2. Relationship among actions and achievements to obtain sustainable development goals for global warming management.

A recent report by IRENA [40] has mentioned that the rapid growth in industrialisation can lead to achieve the
goal of 70–360 GW/year hydrogen production by water electrolysis by 2040 at a competitive price. In order to
obtain LCOH of 2 AUD/kg [41], the cleaner electricity price which is currently 51 AUD/MWh needs to be lower
than 30 AUD/MWh along with capital cost of centralised electrolysers be lower than 500 USD/kW [42,43]. An
electrolyser can have a 20 years of lifespan but it needs periodic replacement of the stack [29]. Though current
stack lifetime (and electrolyser efficiency) of alkaline (ALK), polymer membrane (PEM) and solid oxide (SOEC)
eletrolysers are 50k–90k h (63%–70%), 30k–90k h (56%–63%), and 10k–30k h (74%–81%), respectively, these
are expected to be improved to 100k–150k h (70%–80%), 100k–150k h (67%–74%), and 75k–100k h (77%–84%),
respectively by 2050 [37]. As demonstrated by James et al. [44] with the H2 A model, about 82.38% of the LCOH
(4.2 USD2007/kgH2 ) was spent for green electricity generation for a future centralised PEM electrolysis hydrogen
production system with capacity of 50,000 kgH2/day in 2025. The inputs were capital costs (i.e., uninstalled capital,
stack cost, balance of plant (BOP)), decommissioning cost, operations, and maintenance (O&M) costs (fixed and
variable), and the costs of the energy input as electricity.
With demand of lower technology costs including higher efficiency and life period, the LCOH is expected to
reduce to an expected level by 2050 and the production scale is expected to grow rapidly all-around the world. Being
the key component of the electrolysis process, the renewable energy sources have limitation with full load hour
(FLH) availability, which is also known as capacity factor. In European regions, 53%, 36% and 14% FLH/year can
be available from offshore wind, onshore wind and solar PV energy sources by 2040 [37]. These may require battery
technology to increase the FLH with an additional expenditure. On the other hand, 100% FLH could be assured
with nuclear energy and fossil fuel-based hydrogen production processes. These technologies require efficient
management of wastes [45] and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [46,47], respectively. Most recent levelised cost
of electricity (LCOE) of various technologies have been presented in the report, “Projected Costs of Generating
Electricity 2020” [48], which can help projecting LCOH using available technologies where electricity could be
used as feedstock for hydrogen production.
It was reported in the year 2017 [47] that the scaling up of hydrogen refuelling station into 1 tonneH2 /day which
required a capital cost of about 3 M USD in 2015 may reduce to about 1 M USD in 2030, and the CO2 -e abatement
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cost of 1500 USD/tonne may reduce to less than 50 USD/tonne due to combination of factors like scaling up of
production, rapid growth in fuel cell technologies, hydrogen production technologies, and efficient CCS pathways.
International Energy Agency (IEA) [49] reported that the capital expenditures (CAPEX) of steam methane reforming
(SMR) process can be reduced by 8 times when hydrogen production capacity is scaled up from 1000 N m3 /h to
100,000 N m3 /h, which significantly reduces the hydrogen production cost. The higher cost of noble metal catalysts
and restocking frequency due to deactivation in the reforming process also increase LCOH [50]. IEA [51] has
reported that the global LCOH from natural gas along with CCS ranged from 1.2–2.1 USD/kgH2 in 2019 due to
variation of price in regions, which may not reduce significantly within next 3 decades. By 2050, the investment
cost in SMR with CCS is anticipated to be varied from 0.7–1.25 M Euro2019/MW of hydrogen production capacity
than the current range of 0.6–1.7 M Euro2019/MW [37]. Technology readiness level (TRL) will influence the target
of reducing the overall LCOH. The TRL of the SMR, SMR+ CCS, methane pyrolysis, coal gasification (CG), CG+
CCS, biogas gasification with CCS, and electrolysis with clean energies (solar, wind, nuclear) have been reported
to be 9, 7–8, 3–5, 9, 6–7, 3–5, and 9, respectively [52]. It indicates that the CCS technologies need to be more
efficient and cheaper to achieve cleaner hydrogen production goals. Economically viable CCS integrated reforming
processes for hydrogen production facilities can contribute to reduce carbon emission from ammonia, urea, nitrates,
steelmaking, oil refining, aluminium and iron ore refineries [53]. These industries need to retrofit the CCS technology
with the thermo-electric energy and hydrogen feedstock supply streams.
A recent work on swine manure biogas to hydrogen production [54] via steam reforming has indicated the LCOH
0.14 USD/kWh (approximately 4.71 USD/kgH2 ) with ecological efficiency of 93.73% for 8760 h/year operation
and 8 years of payback period. Producing hydrogen from wastes or biomass is still higher due to trade-off values
of waste management expenses than that obtained by the reforming process, but the evolving technologies have the
potential to reduce the cost significantly by 2050. The sorption enhanced steam methane reforming (SE-SMR) has
likelihood to produce lower CO2 emission while producing hydrogen in comparison to that of SMR process [55].
Yan et al. [55] reported that the LCOH of SE-SMR process ranges from £1.9–£2.8 per kg hydrogen and CCS costs
about £91–£176 per tonne of CO2 . Usually, the SMR process emits about 9.2–9.3 kg of CO2 while producing 1 kg
of hydrogen from natural gas [56].
With increased electrolyser efficiency, reduced renewable energy production cost, and capital and operating costs
of the hydrogen production infrastructure in the rural areas, the LCOH can be higher than the targeted LCOH, but
could be effective in an off-grid location. This hydrogen can be used as an alternative energy storage for electricity
production via fuel cells. Off-grid location LCOH in rural areas of Australia [57] has been assessed to be 3.25–3.97
USD/kgH2 , and about 6–7 Euro/kgH2 in Spain [58], with solar PV. Besides the grid electricity and solar PV or other
renewable energy coupled hydrogen production facilities have the potential for scaling up to result into the low-cost
hydrogen economy [59]. Integrated energy supply for hydrogen production capacity of more than 100 tonnes/day
in the steel refineries, chemical production factories, or petroleum refineries can be implemented with more than
95% availability at a LCOH of 2.5 USD/kgH2 by 2030 [60]. Such challenging target can be achieved only if the
capital costs of the electrolysis technology reduced by more than 60% with capacity increment, 20%–28% increase
of the electrolyser efficiency, geological hydrogen storage, and reduction of solar energy production cost to less
than 500 USD/kW DC [60]. These industries can easily adopt the fossil fuel-based hydrogen supply to meet the
requirement of feedstock and energy consumptions if hydrogen along with CCS can be supplied at a projected
similar price of the integrated solar PV system by 2030. In this way, CO2 emitting industries can turn into clean
hydrogen consuming industries.

4. Conclusion
Though there are costs involved in many stages linked to the hydrogen production and consumption, most of
the studies are dealing with the production cost due to early state of the scaling up plan to replace the fossil
fuel in recent years. Therefore, the LCOH analysis can help to identify the stages of the costs included in the
system. Then the overall target of the LCOH will be compared to identify the overall techno-economic status
of the infrastructure. Then the relevant technical development can be planned to reduce costs to achieve the
ultimate target. This review shows that by integrating CCUS with thermo-chemical and biological processes, and
by increasing low-cost renewable energy production (i.e., hydro, wind, solar, nuclear) for electrolysis there will be
increased amount of hydrogen production which can be used for clean energy production for target industries to
eliminate the emission intensive processes. The LCOH analysis showed that the key challenges are the higher price
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of feedstock and processing technologies, lower process efficiencies, higher CCS costs, higher costs of hydrogen
storage, transmission, and end users’ expenditures. The overall cost of hydrogen for the consumers will only reduce
when all the identified factors (i.e., scaling-up, efficient, and optimised production and distribution technologies) of
the production and delivery supply chain can be optimised for large-scale applications. Though there is a target to
achieve a global energy transformation by 2050 through sustainable pathways, the study shows that the continual
development must keep going on at higher pace to achieve the objective of keeping the global warming level at a
desired level.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could
have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability
Data will be made available on request.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the research supports provided by Central Queensland University
Australia.

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