Outreach and Education

To achieve California’s ambitious climate goals, a shift to hydrogen fuel for some transportation sectors may be essential. In this report, we explore the build-out of a hydrogen fuel distribution system including uptake of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty fuel cell electric vehicles. Our analysis of Base and High Case scenarios includes costs of building and operating a hydrogen vehicle and fuel system and estimates workforce impacts. We consider scenarios with about 125,000 vehicles by 2030 in the Base Case and 250,000 in the high case. This increases by an order of magnitude to 2045. Vehicle and station investment costs associated with the Base Case reach anywhere from $4 to 12 billion USD by 2030 and increase by a factor of eight by 2045. Costs per kg of hydrogen, including fuel transmission to stations and station costs delivered to vehicles, could be in the range of $4 to 8 per kg. This becomes $6 to 10/kg as a final delivered cost, if production of hydrogen were to cost $2/kg. Workforce impacts in the Base Case include 600 to 2,200 jobs created by 2030, rising rapidly thereafter. This report was prepared by the ITS-UC Davis Energy Futures Hydrogen Program in partnership with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.

About this Report
If deployed at-scale, low carbon intensity (LCI) hydrogen technology applications in the hard-to-abate sectors can support achieving U.S. carbon emissions reduction ambitions at a lower cost to society.

At the request of the Secretary of Energy, the National Petroleum Council (NPC) conducted a comprehensive study on the deployment of LCI hydrogen at-scale in the U.S. to support decarbonization of various energy and industrial market sectors across the entire value chain, including production, storage, transportation, and end uses. This study’s report, Harnessing Hydrogen: A Key Element of the U.S. Energy Future, evaluates the key economic, policy, regulatory, technical, and public acceptance challenges and critical enablers along the hydrogen value chain that must be addressed to achieve at-scale LCI hydrogen deployment.

The NPC assembled a diverse team of more than 200 experts from over 100 organizations, 70% of which come from outside of the oil and gas industry. This study leveraged scenario-based modeling, partnering with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Energy Initiative. The study generated unique insights due to the diverse perspectives of the study participants, many of whom have practical experience executing large-scale projects, informing the technoeconomic and life cycle assessment models.

About the Study Participants
The study participants were drawn from NPC members’ organizations as well as from many other industries, federal and state agencies, environmental and other NGOs, other public-interest groups, financial institutions, consultancies, academia, and research groups. More than 200 people from 100 organizations served on the study’s committee, subcommittee, task groups, and subgroups. While all have relevant expertise for the study, only about 33 percent are from the oil and natural gas industry. This broad participation was an integral part of the study with the goal of soliciting input from an informed range of interested parties.