Investigation and economic assessment of green hydrogen usage in manufacturing companies

Green Hydrogen is considered an accelerator for decarbonization of industry and factories. Besides the technical hurdles, there is also insecurity about the economic perspective of procurement and prices for hydrogen in future. Especially the scenarios for production and supply in Germany differ in assumptions and price ranges. The current use cases vary from steel to glass or chemical industry but use cases in discrete manufacturing are scarce and therefore economic estimations as well. Hence, we provide a method to estimate the cost of a hydrogen-supported energy supply in a scenario-based approach. The method employs current scenario studies for the future hydrogen market and is embedded in a data analysis framework which allows it to consider various design parameters for the scenarios. In a case study, the cost of energy for a medium-sized company is estimated and discussed against the background of data availability and level of detail.