Technology selection for hydrogen production in China by integrating emergy into life cycle sustainability assessment

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126303
• Publication Date: 2021-02-10T23:47:54Z
• Authors: Hui Li; Xilong Yao; Mark Awe Tachega; Dulal Ahmed; Mohamed Gabir Ahm...
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 11. Sustainability; 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; 12. Responsible consumption; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Abstract With increasing energy demands and increasingly serious ecological problems, China is facing an urgent need for energy transformation. Hydrogen is regarded as one of the most promising energy sources that will play an important role in future energy transformation. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for selecting sustainable hydrogen production technologies (HPT). Emergy-based indicators can reflect the sustainability of HPT in terms of resource consumption. Therefore, emergy-based indicators are added to the sustainability assessment framework. Life cycle sustainability of HPT is evaluated from economic, environmental, social, emergy-based and technical dimensions. Furthermore, the influence of decision makers’ preferences on the selection of HPT is analyzed. The results show that when decision makers prioritize the emergy-based dimension, hydrogen production from copper-chlorine (Cu–Cl) thermochemical water-splitting is the most sustainable technology option, followed by water electrolysis via wind power and natural gas steam reforming. On the contrary, coal gasification is the least sustainable option. When decision makers prioritize the environmental dimension, the selection order of HPT is the same, yet the sustainability scores change. Finally, when decision makers prioritize the economic dimension, water electrolysis via wind power becomes the worst option.