Is the Polish Solar-to-Hydrogen Pathway Green? A Carbon Footprint of AEM Electrolysis Hydrogen Based on an LCA

Efforts to direct the economies of many countries towards low-carbon economies are being made in order to reduce their impact on global climate change. Within this process, replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen will play an important role in the sectors where electrification is difficult or technical...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pawłowski, A. (Author), Żak, J. (Author), Żelazna, A. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
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020 |a 19961073 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a Is the Polish Solar-to-Hydrogen Pathway Green? A Carbon Footprint of AEM Electrolysis Hydrogen Based on an LCA 
260 0 |b MDPI  |c 2023 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.3390/en16093702 
520 3 |a Efforts to direct the economies of many countries towards low-carbon economies are being made in order to reduce their impact on global climate change. Within this process, replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen will play an important role in the sectors where electrification is difficult or technically and economically ineffective. Hydrogen may also play a critical role in renewable energy storage processes. Thus, the global hydrogen demand is expected to rise more than five times by 2050, while in the European Union, a seven-fold rise in this field is expected. Apart from many technical and legislative barriers, the environmental impact of hydrogen production is a key issue, especially in the case of new and developing technologies. Focusing on the various pathways of hydrogen production, the essential problem is to evaluate the related emissions through GHG accounting, considering the life cycle of a plant in order to compare the technologies effectively. Anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolysis is one of the newest technologies in this field, with no LCA studies covering its full operation. Thus, this study is focused on a calculation of the carbon footprint and economic indicators of a green hydrogen plant on the basis of a life cycle assessment, including the concept of a solar-to-hydrogen plant with AEM electrolyzers operating under Polish climate conditions. The authors set the range of the GWP indicators as 2.73–4.34 kgCO2eq for a plant using AEM electrolysis, which confirmed the relatively low emissivity of hydrogen from solar energy, also in relation to this innovative technology. The economic profitability of the investment depends on external subsidies, because, as developing technology, the AEM electrolysis of green hydrogen from photovoltaics is still uncompetitive in terms of its cost without this type of support. © 2023 by the authors. 
650 0 4 |a Anion exchange 
650 0 4 |a Anion exchange membrane 
650 0 4 |a anion exchange membrane (AEM) 
650 0 4 |a carbon footprint 
650 0 4 |a Carbon footprint 
650 0 4 |a Climate change 
650 0 4 |a Economics 
650 0 4 |a Electrolysis 
650 0 4 |a Environmental impact 
650 0 4 |a Environmental technology 
650 0 4 |a Exchange membranes 
650 0 4 |a Fossil fuels 
650 0 4 |a green hydrogen 
650 0 4 |a Green hydrogen 
650 0 4 |a Greenhouse gases 
650 0 4 |a Hydrogen pathway 
650 0 4 |a Hydrogen plants 
650 0 4 |a Hydrogen production 
650 0 4 |a Hydrogen storage 
650 0 4 |a Investments 
650 0 4 |a Life cycle 
650 0 4 |a Life cycle assessment 
650 0 4 |a life cycle assessment (LCA) 
650 0 4 |a Membrane electrolysis 
650 0 4 |a photovoltaic power plant 
650 0 4 |a Photovoltaic power plant 
650 0 4 |a Solar power generation 
650 0 4 |a solar-to-hydrogen 
650 0 4 |a Solar-to-hydrogen 
700 1 0 |a Pawłowski, A.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Żak, J.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Żelazna, A.  |e author 
773 |t Energies  |x 19961073 (ISSN)  |g 16 9