Future hydrogen demand: A cross-sectoral, global meta-analysis

Hydrogen and synthesis products are considered to be of high importance in future energy systems and therefore play an increasing role in climate change mitigation strategies. This working paper provides an overview of over 40 scenarios from published energy system studies for the future development of hydrogen demand from a global perspective as well as for the EU and China. Demand projections are compared for the sectors industry, buildings and transport up to the year 2050. The results are further compared to the bandwidth of hydrogen demand in the scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. The findings show that hydrogen is needed to reach climate neutrality in most scenarios and it will become an important, but not a dominant energy carrier in the future. The scenarios show a large range in hydrogen demand both in absolute and in relative terms, which indicates a high uncertainty in the ramp of hydrogen markets. Globally, the hydrogen share in 2050 ranges between 4-11% of total final energy demand. In all regions, the transport sector has the largest share of hydrogen in total energy demand and the largest absolute hydrogen demand. In the EU, the hydrogen share in transport energy ranges from 13-36%% and is considerably higher than globally and in China (10-19%) in 2050. The hydrogen demand projections for industry are between 2%-9% share of industry energy demand in 2050. In the building sector, the role of hydrogen is smaller than in the other sectors in all regions assessed (global share between 1%-2% in 2050).