Breaking the hard-to-abate bottleneck in China’s path to carbon neutrality with clean hydrogen

Xi Yang (), Chris P. Nielsen, Shaojie Song and Michael B. McElroy ()
Additional contact information
Xi Yang: Harvard University
Chris P. Nielsen: Harvard University
Shaojie Song: Harvard University
Michael B. McElroy: Harvard University

Nature Energy, 2022, vol. 7, issue 10, 955-965

Abstract: Abstract Countries such as China are facing a bottleneck in their paths to carbon neutrality: abating emissions in heavy industries and heavy-duty transport. There are few in-depth studies of the prospective role for clean hydrogen in these ‘hard-to-abate’ (HTA) sectors. Here we carry out an integrated dynamic least-cost modelling analysis. Results show that, first, clean hydrogen can be both a major energy carrier and feedstock that can significantly reduce carbon emissions of heavy industry. It can also fuel up to 50% of China’s heavy-duty truck and bus fleets by 2060 and significant shares of shipping. Second, a realistic clean hydrogen scenario that reaches 65.7 Mt of production in 2060 could avoid US$1.72 trillion of new investment compared with a no-hydrogen scenario. This study provides evidence of the value of clean hydrogen in HTA sectors for China and countries facing similar challenges in reducing emissions to achieve net-zero goals.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01114-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:7:y:2022:i:10:d:10.1038_s41560-022-01114-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01114-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().