Renewable Electricity and Green Hydrogen Integration for Decarbonization of “Hard-to-Abate” Industrial Sectors

This paper investigates hydrogen’s potential to accelerate the energy transition in hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel, petrochemicals, glass, cement, and paper. The goal is to assess how hydrogen, produced from renewable sources, can foster both industrial decarbonization and the expansion of renewable energy installations, especially solar and wind. Hydrogen’s dual role as a fuel and a chemical agent for process innovation is explored, with a focus on its ability to enhance energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. Integrating hydrogen with continuous industrial processes minimizes the need for energy storage, making it a more efficient solution. Advances in electrolysis, achieving efficiencies up to 60%, and storage methods, consuming about 10% of stored energy for compression, are discussed. Specifically, in the steel sector, hydrogen can replace carbon as a reductant in the direct reduced iron (DRI) process, which accounts for around 7% of global steel production. A next-generation DRI plant producing one million tons of steel annually would require approximately 3200 MW of photovoltaic capacity to integrate hydrogen effectively. This study also discusses hydrogen’s role as a co-fuel in steel furnaces. Quantitative analyses show that to support typical industrial plants, hydrogen facilities of several hundred to a few thousand MW are necessary. “Virtual” power plants integrating with both the electrical grid and energy-intensive systems are proposed highlighting hydrogen’s critical role in industrial decarbonization and renewable energy growth.