The targeted ramp-up of a green hydrogen economy is seen as a key enabler for the defossilization of industrial manufacturing across sectors – evolving from today’s main hydrogen uses for fertilizers or petrochemical refining to new applications, such as its potential as a climate-neutral reducing agent in steel or non-ferrous metal industries. However, multiple challenges and uncertainties still prevent the current market development from meeting the ambitious expectations for cost-efficient green hydrogen projects. This work presents a methodological framework for the economic and environmental assessment of various industrial green hydrogen applications by considering site-specific factors and regional hydrogen supply options. The framework can support different industrial stakeholders in evaluating the feasibility of green hydrogen for climate-neutral manufacturing sites. A case study of a chemical production site in Germany demonstrates the competitiveness of green hydrogen compared to the existing supply of fossil hydrogen delivered by trailers and the use of natural gas as a rotary kiln heating source. The scenario analysis considers the operation of a local electrolytic hydrogen production with variable electricity costs and assesses the cost-efficiency of the applications in comparison to German energy prices and greenhouse gas emission savings on a well-to-tank basis. The case study illustrates the remaining price gap that green hydrogen needs to overcome and highlights the importance of site-specific factors, such as the electric grid capacity and infrastructure costs, affecting the transition to a net-zero production site. Download: Download Word document (8MB)
Scheffler et al. (2026) studied this question.