Hydrogen-based technologies: limits and potentials of life-cycle cost approaches

Hydrogen is considered to be one of the most promising energy carriers to satisfy the energy requirements of the world and reduce the impact of carbon emissions on environment and global warming. The growing interest on hydrogen economy is testified by the plans of the European Union which include hydrogen as a clean energy source. In fact, the EU ambitious objective is to produce green hydrogen by installing at least 40 GW of water electrolysis plants by 2030. Besides, life-cycle cost (LCC) approaches are a powerful tool to understand the economic sustainability of the existing or under-development hydrogen-based technologies and the potential key role of hydrogen. Based on these considerations, we believe that a comprehensive and systematic review on the use of LCC applied to hydrogen technologies is timely and opportune, since this covers a lack of current literature. In particular, our objective is to analyse the evolution of these studies in the decade from 2012 to 2021, to elucidate limits, strengths, common aspects and differences of the approaches.