Hydrogen | Sicily
Techno-Economic Analysis of Clean Hydrogen Production Plants in Sicily: Comparison of Distributed and Centralized Production
In 2022, about 83% of the hydrogen used globally, mainly for industrial use, was obtained by reforming natural gas and by coal [1], processes that generate significant amounts of environmental emissions such as carbon dioxide but are currently the cheapest available.
However, there are also other ways to obtain hydrogen, such as through thermochemical processes such as pyrolysis and gasification or through electrolysis, a process that, to be truly sustainable, would have to be powered by electricity from renewable sources, such as wind or photovoltaic energy. If the electricity used is produced from renewable sources, the hydrogen is commonly labeled as green, since its production does not produce direct carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change, although there is no universally accepted definition and the EU is moving away from these types of color-based classifications
[2]. The clean or renewable hydrogen thus produced can be used in “hard-to-abate” industrial sectors, that is, those for which electrification is technically difficult and uncompetitive because of, for example, the high temperatures required by some industrial processes. Other interesting applications are in the transport sector and as a chemical storage of electricity
