Seasonality Impact in Green Hydrogen Imports to Europe

Europe has been identified as a hydrogen importer due to renewable energy resources limitations. Hydrogen import demand may have seasonal fluctuations in Europe due to temperature and renewable energy availability. This seasonal demand creates the need for additional infrastructure in exporting countries to match the demand with the supply, impacting the cost. We evaluate the impact of including seasonality integration costs on the countries from which Europe could import hydrogen. Import costs were evaluated using an optimization model. These costs were then used as inputs to an energy system model to evaluate the effect on the European energy system. A sensitivity analysis was done considering two different storage costs both in Europe and MENA. The results show that seasonality has a large impact on the import costs with the variations in storage costs playing a smaller role. On the European system, higher storage costs lead to lower hydrogen imports.