Decarbonization of the Metal Industry in Hamburg – Demand, Efficiency and Costs of Green Hydrogen

The metal industry is energy and therefore CO
2
intensive, which causes challenges with regard to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The German Climate Protection Law aims to reduce industrial CO
2
e emissions from 186 million t per year in 2020 to 118 million t per year in 2030. Germany’s stated goal is to achieve net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. This study focuses on the process-related hydrogen (H
2
) demand in Hamburg’s copper, steel, and aluminum industries, as part of the project “Northern German Living Lab” The H
2
demand is used to size on-site Power-to-Hydrogen (PtH
2
) units. Finally, different pricing scenarios are developed to compare the costs of H
2
based to the as-is natural gas (NG) based metal reduction over time.