Applications & Pathways

The trend to replace traditional fossil fuel vehicles is becoming increasingly apparent. The replacement concerns the use of pure biofuels or in blends with traditional fuels the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel and above all the introduction of electric propulsion. The introduction of new types of vehicle propulsion affects the demand for specific fuels the needs for new infrastructure or the nature of the emissions to the environment generated by fuel production and vehicle operation. The article presents a mathematical model using the difference of two logistic functions the first of which describes the development of the production of a specific type of vehicle and the second the withdrawal of this type of vehicle from traffic after its use. The model makes it possible to forecast both the number of vehicles of each generation as a function of time as well as changes in energy demand from various sources and changes in exhaust emissions. The results of the numerical simulation show replacing classic vehicles with alternative vehicles increases the total energy demand if the generation of the next generation occurs earlier than the decay of the previous generation of vehicles and may decrease in the case of overlapping or delays in the creation of new vehicles compared to the course of the decay function of the previous generation. For electric vehicles carbon dioxide emissions are largely dependent on the emissions from electricity generation. The proposed model can be used to forecast technology development variants as well as analyze the current situation based on the approximation of real data from Vehicle Registration Offices.

Hot water and space heating account for about 80% of total energy consumption in the residential sector in the UK. It is thus crucial to decarbonise residential heating to achieve UK's 2050 greenhouse gas reduction targets. However the decarbonisation transitions determined by most techno-economic energy system models might be too optimistic or misleading for relying on cost minimisation alone and not considering households' preferences for different heating technologies. This study thus proposes a novel framework to incorporate heterogeneous households' (HHs) preferences into the modelling process of the UK TIMES model. The incorporated preferences for HHs are based on a nationwide survey on homeowners' choices of heating technologies. Preference constraints are then applied to regulate the HHs' choices of heating technologies to reflect the survey results. Consequently compared to the least cost transition pathway the preference-driven pathway adopts heating technologies gradually without abrupt increases of market shares. Heat pumps and electric heaters are deployed much less than in the cost optimal result. Extensive district heating using low-carbon fuels and conservation measures should thus be deployed to provide flexibility for decarbonisation. The proposed framework can also incorporate preferences for other energy consumption technologies and be applied to other linear programming based energy system models.

Alternative and especially renewable marine fuels are needed to reduce the environmental and climate impacts of the shipping sector. This paper investigates the business case for hydrogen as an alternative fuel in a new-built vessel utilizing fuel cells and liquefied hydrogen. A real option approach is used to model the optimal time and costs for investment as well as the value of deferring an investment as a result of uncertainty. This model is then used to assess the impact of a carbon tax on a ship owner’s investment decision. A low carbon tax results in ship owners deferring investments which then slows the uptake of the technology. We recommend that policymakers set a high carbon tax at an early stage in order to help hydrogen compete with fossil fuels. A clear and timely policy design promotes further investments and accelerates the uptake of new technologies that can fulfill decarbonization targets.

The application of newly available technologies in the green maritime sector is difficult due to conflicting requirements and the inter-relation of different ecological technological and economical parameters. The governments incentivize radical reductions in harmful emissions as an overall priority. If the politics do not change the continuous implementation of stricter government regulations for reducing emissions will eventually result in the mandatory use of what we currently consider alternative fuels. Immediate application of radically different strategies would significantly increase the economic costs of maritime transport thus jeopardizing its greatest benefit: the transport of massive quantities of freight at the lowest cost. Increased maritime transport costs would immediately disrupt the global economy as seen recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason the industry has shifted towards a gradual decrease in emissions through the implementation of “better” transitional solutions until alternative fuels eventually become low-cost fuels. Since this topic is very broad and interdisciplinary our systematic overview gives insight into the state-of-the-art available technologies in green maritime transport with a focus on the following subjects: (i) alternative fuels; (ii) hybrid propulsion systems and hydrogen technologies; (iii) the benefits of digitalization in the maritime sector aimed at increasing vessel efficiency; (iv) hull drag reduction technologies; and (v) carbon capture technologies. This paper outlines the challenges advantages and disadvantages of their implementation. The results of this analysis elucidate the current technologies’ readiness levels and their expected development over the coming years.

Fossil fuels depletion and increasing environmental impacts arising from their use call for seeking growing supplies from renewable and nuclear primary energy sources. However it is necessary to simultaneously attend to both the electrical power needs and the specificities of the transport and industrial sector requirements. A major question posed by the shift away from traditional fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources lies in matching the power demand with the daily and seasonal oscillation and the intermittency of these natural energy fluxes. Huge energy storage requirements become necessary or otherwise the decline of the power factor of both the renewable and conventional generation would mean loss of resources. On the other hand liquid and gaseous fuels for which there is vast storage and distribution capacity available appear essential to supply the transport sector for a very long time ahead besides their domestic and industrial roles. Within this context the present assessment suggests that proven technologies and sound tested principles are available to develop an integrated energy system relying on synthetic fuels. These would incorporate carbon capture and utilization in a closed carbon cycle progressively relying mostly on solar and/or nuclear primary sources providing both electric power and gaseous/liquid hydrocarbon fuels having ample storage capacity and able to timely satisfy all forms of energy demand. The principles and means are already available to develop a carbon-neutral synthetic fuel economy.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) plants coupled with storage for domestic self-consumption purposes seem to be a promising technology in the next years as PV costs have decreased significantly and national regulations in many countries promote their installation in order to relax the energy requirements of power distribution grids. However electrochemical storage systems are still unaffordable for many domestic users and thus the advantages of self-consumption PV systems are reduced. Thus in this work the adoption of hydrogen systems as energy vectors between a PV plant and the energy user is proposed. As a preliminary study in this work the design of a PV and hydrogen-production self-consumption plant for a single dwelling is described. Then a technical and economic feasibility study conducted by modeling the facility within the Homer Energy Pro energy systems analysis tool is reported. The proposed system will be able to provide back not only electrical energy but also thermal energy through a fuel cell or refined water covering the fundamental needs of the householders (electricity heat or cooling and water). Results show that although the proposed system effectively increases the energy local use of the PV production and reduces significantly the energy injections or demands into/from the power grid avoiding power grid congestions and increasing the nano-grid resilience operation and maintenance costs may reduce its economic attractiveness for a single dwelling.

As a non-profit UNIDO project funded 100% by the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources International Center for Hydrogen Energy Technologies (ICHET) has been implementing pilot demonstration projects providing applied R&D funding; organizing workshops education and training activities in Turkey and other developing countries to show potential benefits of “hydrogen and fuel cell systems”. It is important to leap-frog developing countries to hydrogen for eliminating detrimental effect of fossil fuels. To achieve its mission ICHET implements pilot demonstration projects in combination with renewable energy systems to encourage local industry to manufacture similar systems and explore market potential for such use. Support is provided to selected industrial partners in Turkey for developing products or for early demonstrations including a fuel cell forklift a fuel cell boat a fuel cell passenger cart with PV integrated roof-top renewable integrated mobile house fuel cell based UPS installations. As more and more systems demonstrated public awareness on applications of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies will increase and viability of such systems will be realized to change public perception.

Hydrogen delivered at hydrogen refuelling station must be compliant with requirements stated in different standards which require specialized sampling device and personnel to operate it. Currently different strategies are implemented in different parts of the world and these strategies have already been used to perform 100s of hydrogen fuel sampling in USA EU and Japan. However these strategies have never been compared on a large systematic study. The purpose of this paper is to describe and compare the different strategies for sampling hydrogen at the nozzle and summarize the key aspects of all the existing hydrogen fuel sampling including discussion on material compatibility with the impurities that must be assessed. This review highlights the fact it is currently difficult to evaluate the impact or the difference these strategies would have on the hydrogen fuel quality assessment. Therefore comparative sampling studies are required to evaluate the equivalence between the different sampling strategies. This is the first step to support the standardization of hydrogen fuel sampling and to identify future research and development area for hydrogen fuel sampling.

‘E-fuels’ or ‘synthetic fuels’ are hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from hydrogen (H2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) where H2 can be produced via electrolysis of water or steam reforming of natural gas and CO2 is captured from the combustion of a fossil or biogenic source or directly from the atmosphere. E-fuels are drop-in substitutes for fossil fuels but their climate change mitigation benefits are largely unclear. This study evaluates the climate change impacts of e-fuels for aviation by combining different sources of CO2 and H2 up to 2050 under two contrasting policy scenarios. The analysis includes different climate metrics and the effects of near-term climate forcers which are particularly relevant for the aviation sector. Results are produced for European average conditions and for Poland and Norway two countries with high and low emission intensity from their electricity production mix. E-fuels can either have higher or lower climate change impacts than fossil fuels depending on multiple factors such as in order of importance the electricity mix the origin of CO2 the technology for H2 production and the electrolyzer efficiency. The climate benefits are generally higher for e-fuels produced from CO2 of biogenic origin while e-fuels produced from CO2 from direct air capture or fossil fuel combustion require countries with clean electricity to outperform fossil fuels. Synthetic fuels produced from H2 derived from natural gas have higher impacts than fossil fuels even when coupled with carbon capture and storage if CO2 is sourced from fossil fuels or the atmosphere. Climate change impacts of e-fuels improve in the future and they can all achieve considerable climate change mitigation in 2050 relative to fossil jet fuel provided that strict climate policy measures are implemented to decarbonize the electricity sector. Under reduced policy efforts future climate impacts in 2050 of e-fuels from atmospheric or fossil CO2 are still higher than those of fossil jet fuels with an average European electricity mix. This study shows the conditions to maximize the climate change mitigation benefits of e-fuels which essentially depend on progressive decarbonization of the electricity sector and on reduced use of CO2 sourced from fossil fuels.

Seaports are responsible for consuming a large amount of energy and producing a sizeable amount of environmental emissions. However optimal coordination and cooperation present an opportunity to transform this challenge into an opportunity by enabling flexibility in their generation and load units. This paper introduces a coordination framework for exploiting flexibility across multiple ports. The proposed method fosters cooperation between ports in achieving lower environmental emissions while leveraging flexibility to increase their revenue. This platform allows ports to participate in providing flexibility for the energy grid through the introduction of a green port-to-grid concept while optimising their cooperation. Furthermore the proximity to offshore wind farms is considered an opportunity for the ports to investigate their role in harnessing green hydrogen. The proposed method explores the hydrogen storage capability of ports as an opportunity for increasing the techno-economic benefits particularly through coupling them with offshore wind farms. Compared to existing literature the proposed method enjoys a comprehensive logistics-electric model for the ports a novel coordination framework for multi-port flexibility and the potentials of hydrogen storage for the ports. These unique features position this paper a valuable reference for research and industry by demonstrating realistic cooperation among ports in the energy network. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed port flexibility coordination from both environmental and economic perspectives.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set decarbonisation goals for the shipping industry. As a result shipowners and operators are preparing to use low- or zero-carbon alternative fuels. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission performances are fundamental for choosing suitable marine fuels. However the current regulations adopt tank-to-wake (TTW) emission assessment methods that could misrepresent the total climate impacts of fuels. To better understand the well-to-wake (WTW) GHG emission performances this work applied the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to a very large crude carrier (VLCC) sailing between the Middle East and China to investigate the emissions. The life cycle GHG emission impacts of using alternative fuels including liquified natural gas (LNG) methanol and ammonia were evaluated and compared with using marine gas oil (MGO). The bunkering site of the VLCC was in Zhoushan port China. The MGO and LNG were imported from overseas while methanol and ammonia were produced in China. Four production pathways for methanol and three production pathways for ammonia were examined. The results showed that compared with MGO using fossil energy-based methanol and ammonia has no positive effect in terms of annual WTW GHG emissions. The emission reduction effects of fuels ranking from highest to lowest were full solar and battery-based methanol full solar and battery-based ammonia and LNG. Because marine ammonia-fuelled engines have not been commercialised laboratory data were used to evaluate the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. The GHG emission reduction potential of ammonia can be exploited more effectively if the N2O emitted from engines is captured and disposed of through after-treatment technologies. This paper discussed three scenarios of N2O emission abatement ratios of 30% 50% and 90%. The resulting emission reduction effects showed that using full solar and battery-based ammonia with 90% N2O abatement performs better than using full solar and battery-based methanol. The main innovation of this work is realising the LCA GHG emission assessment for a deep-sea ship.

The impact of ship emission reductions can be maximised by considering climate health and environmental effects simultaneously and using solutions fitting into existing marine engines and infrastructure. Several options available enable selecting optimum solutions for different ships routes and regions. Carbon-neutral fuels including low-carbon and carbon-negative fuels from biogenic or non-biogenic origin (biomass waste renewable hydrogen) could resemble current marine fuels (diesel-type methane and methanol). The carbon-neutrality of fuels depends on their Well-to-Wake (WtW) emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) including carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide emissions (N2O). Additionally non-gaseous black carbon (BC) emissions have high global warming potential (GWP). Exhaust emissions which are harmful to health or the environment need to be equally removed using emission control achieved by fuel engine or exhaust aftertreatment technologies. Harmful emission species include nitrogen oxides (NOx) sulphur oxides (SOx) ammonia (NH3) formaldehyde particle mass (PM) and number emissions (PN). Particles may carry polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals which cause serious adverse health issues. Carbon-neutral fuels are typically sulphur-free enabling negligible SOx emissions and efficient exhaust aftertreatment technologies such as particle filtration. The combinations of carbon-neutral drop-in fuels and efficient emission control technologies would enable (near-)zero-emission shipping and these could be adaptable in the short- to mid-term. Substantial savings in external costs on society caused by ship emissions give arguments for regulations policies and investments needed to support this development.

As the European Union intensifies its response to the climate emergency increased focus has been placed on the hard-to-abate energy-intensive industries. Primary among these is the steel industry a cornerstone of the European economy and industry. With the emergence of new hydrogen-based steelmaking options particularly through hydrogen direct reduction the structure of global steel production and supply chains will transition from being based on low-cost coal resources to that based on low-cost electricity and therefore hydrogen production. This study examines the techno-economic options for three European countries of Germany Spain and Finland under five different steel supply chain configurations compared to local production. Results suggest that the high costs of hydrogen transportation make a European steelmaking supply chain cost competitive to steel produced with imported hydrogen with local production costs ranging from 465-545 €/t of crude steel (CS) and 380-494 €/tCS for 2030 and 2040 respectively. Conversely imports of hot briquetted iron and crude steel from Morocco become economically competitive with European supply chains. Given the capital and energy intensive nature of the steel industry critical investment decisions are required in this decade and this research serves to provide a deeper understanding of supply chain options for Europe.

The intermittent nature of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar causes the energy supply to be less predictable leading to possible mismatches in the power network. To this end hydrogen production and storage can provide a solution by increasing flexibility within the system. Stored hydrogen as compressed gas can either be converted back to electricity or it can be used as feed-stock for industry heating for built environment and as fuel for vehicles. This research is the first to examine optimal strategies for operating integrated energy systems consisting of renewable energy production and hydrogen storage with direct gas-based use-cases for hydrogen. Using Markov decision process theory we construct optimal policies for day-to-day decisions on how much energy to store as hydrogen or buy from or sell to the electricity market and on how much hydrogen to sell for use as gas. We pay special emphasis to practical settings such as contractually binding power purchase agreements varying electricity prices different distribution channels green hydrogen offtake agreements and hydrogen market price uncertainties. Extensive experiments and analysis are performed in the context of Northern Netherlands where Europe’s first Hydrogen Valley is being formed. Results show that gains in operational revenues of up to 51% are possible by introducing hydrogen storage units and competitive hydrogen market-prices. This amounts to a e126000 increase in revenues per turbine per year for a 4.5 MW wind turbine. Moreover our results indicate that hydrogen offtake agreements will be crucial in keeping the energy transition on track.

As countries seek ways to meet climate change commitments hydrogen fuel offers a low-carbon alternative for sectors where battery electrification may not be viable. Blending hydrogen with fossil fuels requires only modest technological adaptation however since combustion is retained nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions remain a potential disbenefit. We review the potential air quality impacts arising from the use of hydrogen–diesel blends in heavy-duty diesel engines a powertrain which lends itself to hydrogen co-fuelling. Engine load is identified as a key factor influencing NOx emissions from hydrogen–diesel combustion in heavy-duty engines although variation in other experimental parameters across studies complicates this relationship. Combining results from peer-reviewed literature allows an estimation to be made of plausible NOx emissions from hydrogen–diesel combustion relative to pure-diesel combustion. At 0–30% engine load which encompasses the average load for mobile engine applications NOx emissions changes were in the range 59 to +24% for a fuel blend with 40 e% hydrogen. However at 50–100% load which approximately corresponds to stationary engine applications NOx emissions changes were in the range 28 to +107%. Exhaust gas recirculation may be able to reduce NOx emissions at very high and very low loads when hydrogen is blended with diesel and existing exhaust aftertreatment technologies are also likely to be effective. Recent commercial reporting on the development of hydrogen and hydrogen–diesel dual fuel combustion in large diesel engines are also summarised. There is currently some disconnection between manufacturer reported impacts of hydrogen-fuelling on NOx emissions (always lower emissions) and the conclusions drawn from the peer reviewed literature (frequently higher emissions).

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is one of the greatest global challenges through 2050. Besides greenhouse gas emissions air pollution such as nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions has gained increasing attention in agglomerated areas with transport vehicles being one of the main sources thereof. Alternative fuels that fulfill the greenhouse gas reduction goals also offer the possibility of solving the challenge of rising urban pollution. This work focuses on the electric drive option for heavy and light duty vehicle freight transport. In this study fuel cell-electric vehicles battery-electric vehicles and overhead catenary line trucks were investigated taking a closer look at their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution and also considering the investment and operating costs of the required infrastructure. This work was conducted using a bottom-up transport model for the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. Two scenarios for reducing these emissions were analyzed at a spatial level. In the first of these selected federal highways with the highest traffic volume were equipped with overhead catenary lines for the operation of diesel-hybrid overhead trucks on them. For the second spatial scenario the representative urban area of the city of Cologne was investigated in terms of air pollution shifting articulated trucks to diesel-hybrid overhead trucks and rigid trucks trailer trucks and light duty vehicles to battery-electric or fuel cell-electric drives. For the economic analysis the building up of a hydrogen infrastructure in the cases of articulated trucks and all heavy duty vehicles were also taken into account. The results showed that diesel-hybrid overhead trucks are only a cost-efficient solution for highways with high traffic volume whereas battery overhead trucks have a high uncertainty in terms of costs and technical feasibility. In general the broad range of costs for battery overhead trucks makes them competitive with fuel cell-electric trucks. Articulated trucks have the highest potential to be operated as overhead trucks. However the results indicated that air pollution is only partially reduced by switching conventional articulated trucks to electric drive models. The overall results show that a comprehensive approach such as fuel cell-electric drives for all trucks would most likely be more beneficial.

The European steel industry aims at a CO2 reduction of 80–95% by 2050 ensuring that Europe will meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement. As the reduction potentials of the current steelmaking routes are low the transfer toward breakthrough-technologies is essential to reach these goals. Hydrogen-based steelmaking is one approach to realize CO2-lean steelmaking. Therefore the natural gas (NG)-based direct reduction (DR) acts as a basis for the first step of this transition. The high flexibility of this route allows the gradual addition of hydrogen and in a long-term view runs the process with pure hydrogen. Model-based calculations are performed to assess the possibilities for injecting hydrogen. Therefore NG- and hydrogen-based DR models are developed to create new process know-how and enable an evaluation of these processes in terms of energy demand CO2-reduction potentials and so on. The examinations show that the hydrogen-based route offers a huge potential for green steelmaking which is strongly depending on the carbon footprint of the electricity used for the production of hydrogen. Only if the carbon intensity is less than about 120 g CO2 kWh1 the hydrogen-based process emits less CO2 than the NG-based DR process.

This paper presents a mathematical programming approach for the strategic planning of hydrogen production from renewable energies and its use in electric power generation in conventional technologies. The proposed approach aims to determine the optimal selection of the different types of technologies electrolyzers and storage units (energy and hydrogen). The approach considers the implementation of an optimization methodology to select a representative data set that characterizes the total annual demand. The economic objective aims to determine the minimum cost which is composed of the capital costs in the acquisition of units operating costs of such units costs of production and transmission of energy as well as the cost associated with the emissions generated which is related to an environmental tax. A specific case study is presented in the Mexican peninsula and the results show that it is possible to produce hydrogen at a minimum sale price of 4200 $/tonH2 with a total cost of $5.1687 × 106 and 2.5243 × 105 tonCO2eq. In addition the financial break-even point corresponds to a sale price of 6600 $/tonH2 . The proposed model determines the trade-offs between the cost and the emissions generated.

Hydrogen is one of the main alternative fuels with the greatest potential to replace fossil fuels due to its renewable and environmentally friendly nature. Due to this the present investigation aims to evaluate the combustion characteristics performance parameters emissions and variations in the characteristics of the lubricating oil. The investigation was conducted in a spark-ignition engine fueled by gasoline and hydrogen gas. Four engine load conditions (25% 50% 75% and 100%) and three hydrogen gas mass concentration conditions (3% 6% and 9%) were defined for the study. The investigation results allowed to demonstrate that the injection of hydrogen gas in the gasoline engine causes an increase of 3.2% and 4.0% in the maximum values of combustion pressure and heat release rates. Additionally hydrogen causes a 2.9% increase in engine BTE. Hydrogen's more efficient combustion process allowed for reducing CO HC and smoke opacity emissions. However hydrogen gas causes an additional increase of 14.5% and 30.4% in reducing the kinematic viscosity and the total base number of the lubricating oil. In addition there was evidence of an increase in the concentration of wear debris such as Fe and Cu which implies higher rates of wear in the engine's internal components.

Pursued climate goals require reduced greenhouse gas emissions by substituting fossil fuels with energy from renewable sources in all energy-consuming processes. On a large-scale this can mainly be achieved through electricity from wind and sun which are subject to intermittency. To efficiently integrate this variable energy a coupling of the power sector to the residential transport industry and commercial/trade sector is often promoted called sector coupling (SC). Nevertheless our literature review indicates that SC is frequently misinterpreted and its scope varies among available research from exclusively considering the use of excess renewable electricity to a rather holistic view of integrated energy systems including excess heat or even biomass sources. The core objective of this article is to provide a thorough understanding of the SC concept through an analysis of its origin and its main purpose as described in the current literature. We provide a structured categorization of SC derived from our findings and critically discuss its remaining challenges as well as its value for renewable energy systems. We find that SC is rooted in the increasing use of variable renewable energy sources and its main assets are the flexibility it provides for renewable energy systems decarbonization potential for fossil-fuel-based end-consumption sectors and consequently reduced dependency on oil and gas extracting countries. However the enabling technologies face great challenges in their economic feasibility because of the uncertain future development of competing solutions.

Globally iron and steel production is responsible for approximately 6.3% of global man-made carbon dioxide emissions because coal is used as both the combustion fuel and chemical reductant. Hydrogen reduction of iron ore offers a potential alternative ‘near-zero-CO2’ route if renewable electrical power is used for both hydrogen electrolysis and reactor heating. This paper discusses key technoeconomic considerations for establishing a hydrogen direct reduced iron (H2-DRI) plant in New Zealand. The location and availability of firm renewable electricity generation is described the experimental feasibility of reducing locally-sourced titanomagnetite irons and in hydrogen is shown and a high-level process flow diagram for a counter-flow electrically heated H2-DRI process is developed. The minimum hydrogen composition of the reactor off-gas is 46% necessitating the inclusion of a hydrogen recycle loop to maximise chemical utilisation of hydrogen and minimize costs. A total electrical energy requirement of 3.24 MWh per tonne of H2-DRI is obtained for the base-case process considered here. Overall a maximum input electricity cost of no more than US$80 per MWh at the plant is required to be cost-competitive with existing carbothermic DRI processes. Production cost savings could be achieved through realistic future improvements in electrolyser efficiency (∼ US$5 per tonne of H2-DRI) and heat exchanger (∼US$3 per tonne). We conclude that commercial H2-DRI production in New Zealand is entirely feasible but will ultimately depend upon the price paid for firm electrical power at the plant.

Reducing the carbon emissions from trucks is critical to achieving the carbon peak of road freight. Based on the prediction of truck population and well-to-wheel (WTW) emission analysis of traditional diesel trucks and potential clean trucks including natural gas battery-electric plug-in hybrid electric and hydrogen fuel cell the paper analyzed the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of China's road freight under four scenarios including baseline policy facilitation (PF) technology breakthrough (TB) and PF-TB. The truck population from 2021 to 2035 is predicted based on regression analysis by selecting the data from 2002 to 2020 of the main variables such as the GDP scale road freight turnover road freight volume and the number of trucks. The study forecasts the truck population of different segments such as mini-duty trucks (MiDT) light-duty trucks (LDT) medium-duty trucks (MDT) and heavy-duty trucks (HDT). Relevant WTW emissions data are collected and adopted based on the popular truck in China's market PHEVs have better emission intensity especially in the HDT field which reduces by 51% compared with ICEVs. Results show that the scenario of TB and PF-TB can reach the carbon peak with 0.13% and 1.5% total GHG emissions reduction per year. In contrast the baseline and PF scenario fail the carbon peak due to only focusing on the number of clean trucks while lacking the restrictions on the GHG emission factors of energy and ignoring the improvement of trucks' energy efficiency and the total emissions increased by 29.76% and 16.69% respectively compared with 2020. As the insights adopting clean trucks has an important but limited effect which should coordinate with the transition to low carbon energy and the melioration of clean trucks to reach the carbon peak of road freight in China.

Beyond its typical usage as an economical fuel for creating ammonia methanol and petroleum refineries hydrogen has become a modern form of energy. Energy-scarce advanced countries like Japan and Korea are concerned about energy privacy and environmental responsibility. Many wealthy countries have been fervently building hydrogen networks and renewable energy sources to fulfil their main goals or the growing requirement for energy. In this study we concentrate on proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) generally viewed as financially viable for vehicle industries especially for automobiles demanding less hydrogen infrastructure facilities like fleets of cabs buses and logistical automobiles. This overview includes all of the significant PEMFC components focusing on the reaction gas diffusion and polymer. Without question the equipment necessary for a consistent supply of ultra-pure hydrogen is essential for the effectiveness of PEMFC in extensive requests.

Harnessing renewable resources such as solar energy and biogenic waste for hydrogen production offers a path toward a carbon-neutral industrial economy. This study suggests the development of a renewable-based hydrogen and power supply facility (HPSF) that relies on fermentation and solar-driven electrolysis technologies to achieve penetration of renewable hydrogen and electricity in the industrial symbiosis. Literature studies reported that the hybrid battery-hydrogen storage system could effectively improve the sustainability and reliability of renewable energy supplies yet its application under diurnal and seasonal renewable resource variations has not been well studied. Hence this work develops a multi-criteria optimisation framework for the configuration design of the proposed HPSF that concurrently targets industrial hydrogen and electrical loads with the consideration of diurnal and seasonal renewable resource variations. Case scenarios with different storage applications are presented to evaluate the role of storage in improving economic and environmental sustainability. The results show that the application of hybrid storage with molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) systems is preferred from a comprehensive sustainability standpoint which improves the sustainability-weighted return-on investment metric (SWROIM) score by 4%/yr compared to HPSF without storage application. On the other hand the application of a single-battery system is the most economical solution with a return on investment (ROI) of 0.7%/yr higher than the hybrid storage approach. The research outcome could provide insights into the integration of fermentative and solar-driven electrolytic hydrogen production technologies into the industrial symbiosis to further enhance a sustainable economy.

Alternative sources of energy are on the rise primarily because of environmental concerns in addition to the depletion of fossil fuel reserves. Currently there are many alternatives approaches and attempts to introduce alternative energy sources in the field of transport. This article centers around the need to explore additional energy sources beyond the current ones in use. It delves into individual energy sources that can be utilized for transportation including their properties production methods and the advantages and disadvantages associated with their use across different types of drives. The article not only examines the situation in the Czech Republic but also in other nations. In addition to addressing future mobility the thesis also considers how the utilization of new energy sources may impact the environment.