Novel short-term national strategies to promote the use of renewable hydrogen in road transport: A life cycle assessment of passenger car fleets partially fuelled with hydrogen

Abstract

This work presents an energy analysis combined with a comparative environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of eight different passenger car fleets that use renewable hydrogen and a conventional fuel (natural gas or gasoline) under the same total energy input and the same hydrogen-to-mixture energy ratio. The fleets under comparison involve vehicles that use the two fuels separately or in a mixture. Using Italy as an illustrative country, this research work aims to help policy-makers implement well-supported strategies to promote the use of hydrogen in road transport in the short term. The proposed strategies achieve a carbon footprint reduction between 7 % and 35 % with respect to their conventional fleet benchmark. Within the current context, the results suggest the energy and environmental suitability of using hydrogen blends as short-term solutions, involving vehicles that require minor modifications with respect to current compressed natural gas vehicles and gasoline vehicles, while paving the way for pure hydrogen mobility.

Keywords: Hydrogen; Life cycle assessment; National energy and climate plan; Natural gas; Road transport; Sustainable mobility.