Abstract for: Leveraging Sector Couplings within a Hydrogen Valley to Advance Sustainability Goals: Case BalticSeaH2

The European Union has set itself an ambitious goal of becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. One of the backbones in this green transition is to leverage green hydrogen as a versatile energy carrier that can be utilized for hard-to-electrify sectors, such as maritime transportation or steel industry. Sector couplings, e.g., using excess heat for district heating or getting CO2 from biogenic sources, play a critical role in making green hydrogen a viable alternative. In this paper, we study a EU-funded BalticSeaH2 project and the potential of sector couplings within the regional hydrogen valley being built in it. First, we build a system-dynamic model of the green hydrogen value chain encompassing supply and demand of green electricity, hydrogen, main derivatives, and with support for key sector couplings. Second, we run a simulation using Finland as a case example to study the impact and potential of sector couplings for realizing the green hydrogen market and eventually for lowering CO2 emissions. Our work contributes to the energy systems modeling by building a model of the green hydrogen value chain that takes into account sector couplings and offering a draft estimate of their potential in a regional hydrogen valley.