Sustainable Energy & Fuels: Perspective
Sustainable Energy & Fuels: Perspective
Sustainable Energy & Fuels: Perspective
production
Open Access Article. Published on 19 November 2021. Downloaded on 4/10/2023 6:48:59 AM.
Matteo C. Romano, j Falko Ueckerdt, h Jaap Ventek and Mijndert van der
Spek *l
Natural gas based hydrogen production with carbon capture and storage is referred to as blue hydrogen. If
substantial amounts of CO2 from natural gas reforming are captured and permanently stored, such
hydrogen could be a low-carbon energy carrier. However, recent research raises questions about the
effective climate impacts of blue hydrogen from a life cycle perspective. Our analysis sheds light on the
relevant issues and provides a balanced perspective on the impacts on climate change associated with
blue hydrogen. We show that such impacts may indeed vary over large ranges and depend on only a few
key parameters: the methane emission rate of the natural gas supply chain, the CO2 removal rate at the
hydrogen production plant, and the global warming metric applied. State-of-the-art reforming with high
CO2 capture rates combined with natural gas supply featuring low methane emissions does indeed allow
for substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to both conventional natural gas
Received 24th September 2021
Accepted 19th November 2021
reforming and direct combustion of natural gas. Under such conditions, blue hydrogen is compatible
with low-carbon economies and exhibits climate change impacts at the upper end of the range of those
DOI: 10.1039/d1se01508g
caused by hydrogen production from renewable-based electricity. However, neither current blue nor
rsc.li/sustainable-energy green hydrogen production pathways render fully “net-zero” hydrogen without additional CO2 removal.
66 | Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2022, 6, 66–75 This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2022
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appears difficult to justify on climate grounds”.18 Such contra- for oil rening and ammonia production. Currently, the most
dicting results demand an in-depth analysis and a transparent widely used technology for production of high purity hydrogen
scientic discussion of the underlying assumptions and at the scale needed in chemical plants is Steam Methane
approaches to come to a common understanding. Reforming (SMR). Large-scale ammonia and methanol
Whether, and under which conditions, blue hydrogen could production use a range of reformers to produce the ideal syngas
represent a low-carbon energy carrier is a key question at composition for the nal product synthesis, e.g. SMR, air-fed
present, as society urgently needs to make decisions about low- Autothermal Reformers (ATR) and Gas-Heated Reformers
carbon technologies.19 Beside requiring long-term and large (GHR).27 Partial oxidation of natural gas is another commer-
investments, some of these technology choices imply systemic cially operating process that can be used for merchant hydrogen
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structural changes across the energy system, and long-lasting production. Common to all these proven processes is the
Open Access Article. Published on 19 November 2021. Downloaded on 4/10/2023 6:48:59 AM.
impacts on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases production of a H2-rich synthesis gas (syngas for short), from
and thus on climate change. Such decisions must therefore be which H2 and CO2 can be easily separated with high purity.
taken based on solid scientic evidence, for which LCA – carried For large-scale merchant production of hydrogen with CCS
out in line with best practices20–22 – seems the most appropriate in the next decades, oxygen-based technologies with internal
method. Such comprehensive evidence is currently scarce: our heating (e.g. ATR) are likely to become more commonplace due
previous analysis8 did not explore the entire range of blue to good economies of scale, while the higher natural gas
hydrogen production chains and thus did not reect the range of conversion may make the achievement of high CO2 capture
potential climate change impacts. Similarly, Salkuyeh et al.23 efficiencies more energy efficient and less costly.28,29
performed an LCA of few very specic technology options for The net efficiency of converting natural gas into hydrogen is
blue hydrogen production in Canada. The more recent analysis18 high, about 76–77% of the energy content (Lower Heating
does not follow best practices in LCA as it, for example, takes Value, LHV) of the feedstock natural gas is contained in the
into account neither GHG emissions associated with capital hydrogen, both for SMR and for ATR processes.8 It is also
goods nor those originating from transportation and geological notable that SMR, and to a somewhat lesser extent ATR, plants
storage of CO2; and it relies on data for natural gas supply only in typically produce steam in excess of that needed in the
the US context. In addition, Mac Dowell et al. recently published reforming reaction, which can be used to generate electricity.8,26
a short commentary on the perspectives of hydrogen within low- CO2 capture and geological storage is an effective means of
carbon economies and its environmental performance.24 reducing the GHG footprint of hydrogen production from fossil
This article seeks to contribute to closing the described feedstock. In a hydrogen plant with CCS, essentially 100% of the
evidence gap by synthesizing the results from recent peer- carbon in feedstock is fully oxidized to CO2, either through the
reviewed LCA studies of blue hydrogen production and natural water gas-shi reaction or combustion. It can then be readily
gas supply chains, using broad, and realistic, ranges of key removed by chemical solvents or physical separations.
parameters, and thus providing a fact-based perspective on the Depending on the reformer process conguration, the CO2 will
potential climate benets of blue hydrogen. In addition, it seeks be contained in a combination of syngas and combustion
to explain what causes the large differences in climate change exhaust streams. The CO2 molecules can be removed from all
mitigation potential of different blue hydrogen production the CO2-containing gas streams present in the hydrogen
chains. Finally, it denes essential targets for technology devel- production plant (i.e. from syngas and/or combustion ue gas),
opment and regulations. In doing so, it aims to generate and then transported to a permanent underground storage
enhanced understanding of the complexities of blue hydrogen, location. The energy required to run the capture system (e.g.
thereby providing important insights and levers to policy- and steam for solvent regeneration and electricity for CO2
decision-makers as well as to the scientic community. compression) can typically be recovered from the hydrogen
production process. This means that, in contrast to CO2 capture
for electric power, relatively little, if any, additional natural gas
2. Methodological and parameter needs to be burned to supply energy for capture and the cor-
choices responding reduction in efficiency of hydrogen production is
small.8,26 However, relative to a facility without CO2 capture, the
The climate change impacts of hydrogen production from
opportunity for electricity generation is reduced, which slightly
natural gas with CCS – quantied by means of LCA – depend on
increases the life cycle GHG emissions of the hydrogen
several processes within the entire value chain, and on many
production.
assumptions and methodological choices. However, as will be
In the context of reaching net-zero GHG emissions, it is
demonstrated below, we nd that the following three aspects
imperative and technically feasible to remove the vast majority
are particularly important: the blue hydrogen production tech-
of the CO2 produced in the hydrogen plant. However, currently
nology; the methane emissions from natural gas supply chains;
operating (rst-of-a-kind) CO2 capture plants coupled to
and the choice of metrics for quantifying impacts.
hydrogen production remove only 50–60% of the overall (here-
aer “plant-wide”) CO2 emissions produced. This is mainly
2.1 Blue hydrogen production technology with CO2 capture because they capture only CO2 from the syngas in SMR appli-
Hydrogen production from natural gas is a well-established cations, but not the CO2 in the combustion products. Examples
technology that has been used for decades in industry,25,26 e.g. include the Shell Quest project,30 and the Port Arthur plant.31
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These examples are not representative of the hydrogen CCS gas basins.42,53 These variations arise from differences in basin
plant congurations planned in Europe and the US, however, and resource characteristics, operational equipment, mainte-
where plant-wide CO2 removal rates higher than 90% are ex- nance practices, and/or environmental conditions. For example,
pected.32–35 The relevant CO2 capture technologies have been Burns and Grubert report production methane emission rates
demonstrated in a number of commercial or demonstration by US state varying between 0.9% and 3.6% based on a re-
scale plants over several years: commercial scale plants analysis of published literature.51 Furthermore, methane emis-
consistently achieve more than 92% removal of CO2 from coal sion rates estimated in these studies differ substantially from
combustion gas in the commercial-scale Petra Nova facility in official inventory estimates. In a comprehensive meta-analysis
Texas36 and more than 93% removal of CO2 from synthesis gas of eld data in the US, Alvarez et al. report a national
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in the Coffeyville Resources ammonia plant in Kansas.37 More production-averaged methane emission rate of 2.3% across the
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than 99% CO2 removal from hydrogen production syngas is US oil and gas supply chain, 60% higher than official U.S.
commonplace in ammonia plants.38 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) GHG inventory esti-
mates.44 Similarly, a recent analysis of eight years of eld
observations in Western Canada by researchers at Environment
2.2 Methane emissions from natural gas supply chains and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) showed methane emis-
Methane emissions from the oil and gas supply chain are an sions to be 60% higher than that of official Canadian inventory
important contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.39 With estimates.45 Estimates of methane emissions across basins are
a global warming potential around 30 and 85 times higher than continuously being updated as a result of improved measure-
that of CO2 over 100 and 20 years, respectively, methane emis- ment approaches – e.g. a recent analysis of aerial-based
sions can be an important contributor to GHG emissions asso- methane measurements in the Permian basin in the US
ciated with the natural gas supply chain.40 Recent research has exhibited leakage rates over 9%.54 Furthermore, differences in
demonstrated that methane emissions occur across the entire measurement platform (ground-based vs. aerial vs. satellite),
supply chain, including production, processing, pipeline trans- time of measurement, and methodological approach renders
portation, and distribution.41–43 Furthermore, eld measurements direct comparison across studies challenging. Thus, although
in North America have identied underestimation in official each of these individual studies might accurately report
methane emissions inventories.44–46 The climate impacts of blue methane emissions in a specic time and place, the large
hydrogen can hinge on the sources and magnitude of these observed variation makes simplistic country-level representa-
emissions, because they can make up a major fraction of the total tion in LCA studies prone to errors.
GHG emissions when a high level of CO2 capture (and storage) is Another major challenge for LCA studies is the lack of robust
applied within the supply chain. The higher the CO2 capture rates, bottom-up eld data on methane emissions outside North
the higher the relative contributions of such methane emissions America. Over the past decade, several independent eld
to the overall climate impact of blue hydrogen. Also, the life cycle campaigns across multiple oil and gas basins have been con-
impact of upstream methane emissions increases with applica- ducted in the US and Canada. These campaigns have signi-
tion of shorter time horizons for measuring climate impacts. cantly improved our understanding of oil and gas methane
Incorporating methane emissions in an LCA model of blue emissions, including recent breakthroughs in reconciling eld
hydrogen in a representative and context-specic manner is measurements with inventory estimates.46 By comparison, there
non-trivial. On the one hand, the characterization of methane have been far fewer aircra or ground-based eld studies
emissions from natural gas supply chains in commonly used outside North America that can shed light on global oil and gas
life cycle inventory databases is inconsistent and outdated, and methane emissions. Much of the available non-U.S. or Canada
likely to underestimate these emissions.47–49 On the other hand, eld data are based on satellite observations that oen have low
reported methane emissions from natural gas supply chains spatial resolution resulting in large uncertainties associated
based on eld measurements exhibit large variability,44,50–52 with source attribution.55 An example for such satellite-based
making it difficult to select a representative “average” emission data is the methane tracker of the International Energy
value for use in LCA calculations. Agency,56 which provides country-specic methane emissions
Several factors contribute to real and reported variability in from natural gas supply chains. This data set highlights large
methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. While some of country-level variations, with emissions ranging from near-zero
these can be addressed through appropriate methodological for countries like Norway and Qatar to over 6% for countries like
choices in LCA, others require further research and data Libya and Iraq. However, the lack of direct measurements of
collection. The key challenges – in approximate descending methane emissions oen means that country-level emission
order of importance – to incorporating representative methane estimates are uncertain due to methodological issues.
emissions in the LCA of blue hydrogen are: Methane emissions from natural gas supply chains are usually
(1) Spatial and temporal variability. reported as emission rates, e.g. in terms of “gram CH4 emitted
(2) Lack of geographically representative eld data. per gram of natural gas delivered”.41 However, they can also be
(3) Lack of consistent reporting metrics. expressed as “mass methane emitted from natural gas produc-
(4) System boundaries. tion sites per mass methane withdrawn”.51 Comparing emission
Recent eld studies have shown signicant spatial and rates expressed in these two ways requires knowledge about
temporal variability in methane emissions across global oil and natural gas compositions, which are oen not explicitly provided.
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Similarly, if methane emission rates are based on the energy options. A focus on stabilizing the climate at below 2 C
content of natural gas, it is not always clear whether net (lower) or warming in 2100 implies a longer time horizon such as that
gross (higher) caloric values are used, and the assumed value is incorporated in the GWP100 index, which is commonly used in
also oen unknown. Furthermore, natural gas is oen produced long-term scenario analysis and LCA. With the 2015 Paris
as associated gas where it is extracted along with crude oil and Agreement60 as well as increasing awareness about near-term
other liquids, resulting in combined measurements of methane climate damages19 and potential tipping points,61 the scien-
emissions associated with all products. tic and political debate have shied to limiting peak warming
An LCA of blue hydrogen production requires specic to close to 1.5 C.62,63 As 1.5 C will likely be reached before 2050,
emission factors for the natural gas used as feedstock. There- this shi emphasizes the importance of avoiding warming in
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fore, methane emissions of combined production processes the next decades, which supports using shorter global warming
Open Access Article. Published on 19 November 2021. Downloaded on 4/10/2023 6:48:59 AM.
must be assigned or allocated to single products.50,51 Some- potential time horizons such as GWP20 in addition to GWP100
times, methane emissions are entirely assigned to the natural and thus balancing short-term with longer-term emissions.
gas supply chain, which results in an overestimation. But even if
the emissions of combined production are subdivided, this
allocation can be based either on energy content or mass of the
3. Discussion of implications on GHG
co-products, or on the revenue generated by selling them, which emissions
can cause substantial differences in the NG-specic methane
All three elements discussed above are crucial regarding the
emission rates.57,58 Alternatively, a well-level purpose allocation
impacts of natural gas based (blue) hydrogen production on
can be applied,51 assigning emissions entirely to the product
climate change: only a low methane emission rate of the natural
representing the primary purpose of the resource extraction
gas supply chain combined with a high CO2 removal rate at the
infrastructure.
hydrogen production plant allows for substantial reductions of
System boundaries are relevant, because the natural gas
GHG emissions from a life cycle perspective. The methane
supply chain consists of various steps from exploration to nal
emission rate becomes more important with a time horizon of
distribution and it is sometimes unclear which of these steps
20 years instead of 100 years.
are included in reported estimates.49 In general, large-scale blue
In Fig. 1, we show life cycle GHG emissions of grey and blue
hydrogen production will be connected to the high-pressure
hydrogen production considering the three major sources of
natural gas transmission grid and therefore, methane emis-
variability. These include applying both GWP100 and GWP20,
sions from nal distribution to decentralized consumers (i.e.
distinctly different plant congurations representing low (55%)
the low-pressure distribution network) should not be included
and high (93%) plant-wide CO2 removal rates (see “methods”
in the quantication of climate impacts of blue hydrogen.
for a process specication) and variation of the methane
These challenges suggest that further research and data
emission rate of the natural gas supply chain between 0.2% and
collection are required to develop a consistent and compre-
8%. Hereby the selected CO2 capture rates and the resulting
hensive inventory of our global natural gas system. In the
plant-wide CO2 removal rates do not represent absolute limits,
meantime, an exploration of the variability in GHG emissions
but rather show an indicative range between low capture effi-
estimates is needed to understand the drivers of differences in
ciency of the existing plants, focusing on the delivery of CO2 as
GHG emissions from natural gas based hydrogen options.
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GHG emissions than our blue hydrogen conguration with the Nevertheless, our main conclusion is that, if the above
low 55% CO2 removal rate at methane emission rates beyond 6– requirements are met, blue hydrogen can be close to green
7%. Relative reductions of GHG emissions of blue vs. grey hydrogen in terms of impacts on climate change and can thus
hydrogen production increase with increasing CO2 capture play an important and complementary role in the trans-
rates and decreasing methane emission rates. formation towards net-zero economies, at least as a bridging
In general, our ndings are in line with those recently pub- technology during the coming decades. It is important to reit-
lished by Mac Dowell et al. – despite somewhat different scope, erate that no single hydrogen production technology (including
modelled technologies and assumptions, one of their conclu- electrolysis with renewables) is completely net-zero in terms of
sions is that best-in-class natural gas supply chain management GHG emissions over its life cycle and will therefore need addi-
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in combination with high CO2 capture rates is vital for blue tional GHG removal from the atmosphere to comply with strict
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the spectrum of hydrogen provenance and it should be noted temperature water gas-shi, the latter leading to a higher
that natural gas with CCS may be a more sustainable route than hydrogen and CO2 content in the syngas. The numbers 90 and
hydrogen to decarbonize such applications as power 98 represent the CO2 capture rates of the capture unit that
generation. captures CO2 from the produced synthesis gas. Plant-wide,
We have demonstrated the conditions under which blue overall CO2 capture rates amount to 55% and 93% for the
hydrogen has a comparable climate impact to green hydrogen. SMR and ATR conguration, respectively.8 The lower overall
If these conditions are not met, then green hydrogen should be capture rate of the SMR is a consequence of the fact that of the
preferred. Both of these merit orders, for supply and end-use two sources of CO2 present in an SMR, applying capture from
cases, require targeted policies aiming at setting efficient syngas only excludes capturing the CO2 from the natural gas
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Third, the temporal development of the energy system post-combustion unit would be needed to capture all the CO2 in
transformation needs to be borne in mind. Given the short-to the ue gas. The ATR conguration does not include a reformer
medium-term scarcity of green hydrogen, blue hydrogen can furnace as it is driven by heat produced in the reformer itself. It
play a role as a bridging technology supporting the uptake of therefore allows recovering the majority of the direct CO2
hydrogen infrastructure and hydrogen end-use transformation. emissions from the syngas. The ATR does usually have a small
Blue hydrogen projects can be developed under the recom- red heater that emits some CO2, which is why with 98%
mendations presented here without crowding out the global capture from the syngas, 93% of the total plant-wide emissions
ramp-up of green hydrogen supply. As both blue and green are removed.8
hydrogen have innovation potential, policies and regulations Our LCA is based on detailed process modelling, which
should support both options independently until they are fairly quanties the overall energy demand of the hydrogen produc-
mature and can compete (e.g. based on carbon pricing tion plants designed to produce 9 metric tons of hydrogen per
accounting for full life cycle GHG emissions) – provided the hour with and without CO2 capture depending on the plant
above conditions for blue hydrogen are met and the necessary conguration and CO2 capture rates. Antonini et al.8 showed in
prioritization of demand areas is reected. Fig. 2 that some congurations generate excess electricity,
Total costs of blue hydrogen are determined by the costs of which – in line with common LCA procedures20–22 – is assumed
achieving low methane leakage, high capture rates and to substitute average grid electricity via an emission credit.
permanent CO2 storage, as well as natural gas prices, residual Hydrogen production plant congurations that exhibit a nega-
emissions and (explicit or implicit) carbon pricing. The tive electricity balance (including the compression of hydrogen
competitiveness with green hydrogen depends on the cost to 200 bar) are supplied with average grid electricity. Our default
reductions of electrolysis and renewable electricity, as well as location for hydrogen production is Europe – hence, average
green hydrogen availability compared with overall hydrogen European electricity is used or substituted, corresponding to the
demands. The future of blue hydrogen in a climate-neutral “ENTSO-E” region in the ecoinvent database.73 As the grid CO2
world therefore depends strongly on the extent to which intensity e.g. in the US is higher than in Europe, electricity
residual emissions can be avoided or compensated for via substitution and consumption would lead to higher CO2 bene-
carbon dioxide removal as well as on the availability of ts and burdens, respectively.
geological CO2 storage sites. The impacts on climate change of hydrogen from electrolysis
are based on the analysis by Zhang et al.17 Electricity demand for
5. Methods the PEM electrolyzer has been updated12 and amounts to 55
kWh per kg of hydrogen (including compression from 25 bar at
We built our analysis upon the coupled process simulation and the electrolyzer to 200 bar). We used background LCI data from
LCA model developed for our previous analysis8 and refer to this the ecoinvent database, v3.7.1, system model “allocation, cut-off
paper for a detailed description. Some key elements of the by classication”73 instead of v3.5 in the previous analysis.
present analysis, including updates compared to our previous GHG-intensities of average grid electricity in Europe and the US
work, are provided in the following. (used for electrolysis shown in Fig. 2), which represent tech-
Our reference product in the present work is “Hydrogen, nology market shares as well as imports and exports in 2018 and
gaseous, at 200 bar and with a purity of 99.9% or higher”. We 2019, respectively, originate from version v3.8 of the ecoinvent
selected two example, distinctly different hydrogen production database, released end of September 2021.
plant congurations (here called “CCS-low” and “CCS-high'') The methane emission rate from the natural gas supply
from our previous analysis,8 they both include CO2 capture from chain is dened as “(kg) methane emitted per (kg) natural gas
the synthesis gas using methyl diethanolamine (MDEA) as delivered at high-pressure pipeline” in our analysis, i.e. the
absorbent. “CCS-low” represents congurations with low (i.e. associated system boundaries include natural gas extraction
55%) removal of plant-wide CO2 emissions and corresponds from the ground (oen referred to as “production”), gathering
to “SMR with CCS, HT, MDEA 90”. “CCS-high” represents and processing, and high-pressure transmission. Hydrogen
a conguration with high removal of plant-wide CO2 emissions production plants are supplied by high-pressure natural gas
and corresponds to “ATR with CCS, HTLT, MDEA 98”. The pipelines, and therefore, methane emissions from the local
acronyms HT and LT indicate the use of high temperature water natural gas distribution grid are not considered.
gas-shi only or the use of a low temperature and high
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Author contributions 19 V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts,
Conceptualization: CB, MvdS; formal analysis: KT; funding J. Skea, P. R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia,
acquisition: CB, EG; investigation: CB, KT, MvdS; methodology: C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews,
KT; soware: KT; supervision: CB, MvdS; visualization: CB, KT; Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock,
writing – original dra: CB, FU, MvdS, RM, RP, STM; writing – M. Tignor and T. Watereld, Global Warming of 1.5 C. An
review and editing: all. IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of
1.5 C above pre-industrial levels and related global
greenhouse gas emission pathways, in The Context of
Conflicts of interest Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate
Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
There are no conicts to declare. (IPCC), 2018.
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Acknowledgements Data System (ILCD) Handbook – General Guide for Life Cycle
Assessment – Detailed Guidance, European Commission,
Financial support was provided by the Kopernikus Project Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and
Ariadne (FKZ 03SFK5A) funded by the German Federal Ministry Sustainability, Luxembourg, 2010.
of Education and Research, the MIT Energy Initiative CCUS Low 21 ISO 14040, Environmental Management – Life Cycle Assessment
Carbon Energy Center and PSI's ESI platform. STM is sup- – Prinicples and Framework, International Organisation for
ported, in part, with funding from the Canada First Research Standardisation (ISO), 2006.
Excellence Fund.
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