Techno-economic Assessment of Hydrogen as a Decarbonization Measure for California’s Electric System
Techno-economic assessment of hydrogen as a decarbonization measure for California's electric system
Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc.
Recipient
San Francisco, CA
Recipient Location
11th
Senate District
17th
Assembly District
$324,721
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
The E3 team developed and completed expansions to the RESOLVE capacity expansion model to consider hydrogen, in addition to electricity, as an energy carrier that can be produced, stored, distributed, and consumed. This modeling framework was used to evaluate different configurations of a potential hydrogen infrastructure network in the state.
The project team collaborated with two subcontractors, Stanford University and NREL, to develop key datasets, inputs, and assumptions to support modeling efforts. The work with Stanford identified suitable sites for subsurface hydrogen storage in California in terms of physical and geochemical properties. In parallel, NREL performed a techno-economic assessment of technology components along the hydrogen value chain, including potential technologies for green hydrogen production, transport, storage, and end use. These allowed the modeling framework to evaluate different technology options, performance metrics, and cost trajectories. The results have been prepared and submitted as a Final Report, which will be published later in 2026.
The Issue
California has established aggressive goals for greenhouse gas reductions, both in the electric sector and economywide. Senate Bill 100 Joint Agency Report identified electrolytic, “green” hydrogen as one potential emerging technology to support these decarbonization goals and reliability and resilience of the state’s electric supply. The key challenges to deploying hydrogen at low cost and large scale are hydrogen storage and transport. Additionally, hydrogen technologies are nascent: production (e.g., electrolyzers), transportation, storage (e.g., underground storage), and end-use conversion technologies (e.g., fuel cells) all require investment, research and development to identify, evaluate, and support the competitiveness of hydrogen production from renewable electricity and end-use conversion for economy-wide and electric sector applications. Understanding which applications and use cases should take priority will help drive that investment, research, development, and demonstration in the right direction.
Project Innovation
The goal of this project is to assess the role of hydrogen production and conversion technologies to enable decarbonization of the electric sector in California. This study includes developing a dataset of geologic formations in California that could enable low-cost hydrogen storage; developing new datasets for projected costs and performance of hydrogen technologies from production to end-use; and developing new computational tools to determine cost-effective configurations of hydrogen production, storage, transport and end-use equipment to serve California’s decarbonizing electric sector in the context of economy-wide demand for green hydrogen. Using these updated tools, E3 will explore a number of sensitivities to clarify in which sectors and in which applications hydrogen is most cost competitive. These sensitivities will provide insight into where support is needed along the hydrogen lifecycle to increase or achieve cost competitiveness.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
Economic Development
The project will advance stakeholders’ ability to evaluate existing and emerging hydrogen technologies to support the State’s decarbonization goals.
Equity
This project will include an environmental impacts analysis, including equity and environmental impacts considerations, for each modeled scenario. An Environmental Impacts and Mitigation Strategies report will be published as part of this work with key findings and learnings included in the project final report.
Key Project Members
Amber Mahone
Ari Gold-Parker
John de Villier
Subrecipients
Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Calpine Corporation
C-FER Technologies
Mainspring Energy, Inc.
Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC
MRS Environmental, Inc.
Bloom Energy
Match Partners
Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Calpine Corporation
C-FER Technologies
Mainspring Energy, Inc.
Bloom Energy
