Supply-demand strategies for near-term climate benefits from hydrogen in the United States.

Authors

Youyi Xu, Wei Peng, Yuan Yao

Published in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Volume 122. Issue 41. Pages e2519606122. Oct 14, 2025. Epub Oct 06, 2025.

Abstract

Hydrogen (H₂) is a promising energy carrier for decarbonization. However, the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of the H₂ supply and its adoption across various demand sectors in the US remains unclear. Here, we couple prospective life cycle assessment with a process-based integrated assessment model to evaluate the GHG mitigation of H₂ from supply and demand perspectives. Our results show the critical role of H₂ production mix in determining supply-side GHG mitigation potential. Without national carbon pricing or large-scale electrolysis in the near future, biomass-based H₂ (Bio-H₂) emerges as a critical transitional clean H₂ production technology. Bio-H₂ reduces the life cycle GHG emission intensity of the H₂ supply mix by 1.8 to 5.5 kg CO₂ kg^-1 H₂, resulting in a national reduction of 606 to 1,706 Mt CO₂e from 2025 to 2050. This represents 1.6 to 2 times greater mitigation potential compared to scenarios without Bio-H₂. On the demand side, we identify a misalignment: industrial sectors with high mitigation intensity (e.g., iron and steel, 147 Mt CO₂e EJ^-1) receive limited H₂ deployment (0.8 EJ), while the transportation sector accounts for 75% of H₂ use (e.g., passenger and light-duty vehicles, 10 EJ) despite their lower mitigation intensities (54 Mt CO₂e EJ^-1). While economy-wide climate policies (e.g., carbon prices) could direct more industrial H₂ usages, implementing these policies is challenging; sector-specific strategies can be more practical. Our results highlight the importance of near-term support for Bio-H₂ and sector-specific demand strategies to enhance the climate effectiveness of US H₂ deployment.

PMID:
41052338
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Oct 2025.

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