Cost of a potential hydrogen-refueling network for heavy-duty vehicles with long-haul application in Germany 2050

Long-distance road-freight transport emits a large share of Germany's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A potential solution for reducing GHG emissions in this sector is to use green hydrogen in fuel cell electric vehicles (FC-HDV) and establish an accompanying hydrogen refueling station (HRS) network. In this paper, we apply an existing refueling network design model to a HDV-HRS network for Germany until 2050 based on German traffic data for heavy-duty trucks and estimate its costs. Comparing different fuel supply scenarios (pipeline vs. on-site), The on-site scenario results show a network consisting of 137 stations at a cost of 8.38 billion euro per year in 2050 (0.40 euro per vehicle km), while the centralized scenario with the same amount of stations shows a cheaper cost with 7.25 billion euros per year (0.35 euro per vehicle km). The hydrogen cost (LCOH) varies from 5.59 euro /kg (pipeline) to 6.47 euro /kg (on-site) in 2050. (c) 2021 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.