Achieving affordable green hydrogen production plants

Green hydrogen from electrolysis is a critical component of the energy transition for hard-to-electrify sectors. Since creating aggressive targets around green hydrogen production and offtake, many companies looking to deploy green hydrogen electrolysers are now beginning to understand that capital expenditures for green hydrogen production plants are higher than public estimates anticipated.

While cyclical macro issues (i.e. inflation, interest rates, and supply chains) are in large part to blame, Ramboll is also finding important differences between expectations for designs of green hydrogen production systems that have been used in public estimates and what a “real life” system would need to operate. This has downstream consequences for estimating learning rates and cost declines for the technology. We propose a more effective framework for estimating cost declines in green hydrogen production and apply that framework to understand where industry and policy makers can best focus their efforts to reduce capital expenditure costs for new green hydrogen electrolysis facilities

Business Opportunities for the Hydrogen Economy