Ukrainian Hydrogen Export Potential: Opportunities and Challenges in the Light of the Ongoing War

The purpose of the working paper is to study the hydrogen export potential of Ukraine, including the opportunities and challenges in light of the ongoing war, based on the analyses of national and international sources as well as the modeling and calculations conducted within the HYPAT project. The carried-out analysis of the current trends and developments of the hydrogen economy in Ukraine shows that de-spite the ongoing war, the EU remains interested in Ukraine as a potential future hy-drogen supplier. Techno-economic assessment reveals the following: green steel could become an important export product in the future, generating additional reve-nues in the country; Ukraine has a well-established infrastructure for exporting hydro-gen and Power-to-X products to Western Europe via pipelines and seaports, but the repurposing of this infrastructure needs to be further investigated; important energy infrastructures and land for potential renewable energy deployment are currently oc-cupied by the Russian military. It is determined that the war's uncertain duration in-creases the risks of investing in developing the large RE potential in Ukraine so, low-cost RE might only be sufficient to cover domestic demand. The following opportuni-ties and obstacles are highlighted: the development of a hydrogen economy can bring socio-political advantages, but the large-scale hydrogen production in Ukraine might be limited due to water scarcity and competitive water use for the agricultural sector and could imply higher energy costs for households.