Will hydrogen be a game-changer in the Italian decarbonization pathways? Exploiting an Energy System Optimization Model for scenario analysis

Hydrogen is expected to become an undisputed player in the ecological transition throughout the next decades. The potential and the possibilities offered by this energy vector open various opportunities for the so-called “hard-to-abate” sectors of the economy, including industrial production of iron and steel, glass, refineries and the heavy-duty transport. Indeed, heavy-haul, long-range trucks could be hardly electrified due to the technological limits for the application of traditional batteries whereas the old diesel-based passenger trains and many naval routes could improve their functionality and simultaneously contribute to decarbonize the energy system with the use of hydrogen and derivates as propellants. The Italian energy system, in the framework of decarbonization plans for the whole European Union, is considering a wider use of hydrogen to provide an alternative to fossil fuels in hard-to-abate sectors. This work aims to assess and compare different options concerning the pathway to be followed in the development of the future Italian energy system in order to meet decarbonization targets as established by the Paris Agreement and by the European Green Deal, and to infer a techno-economic analysis of the required asset alternatives to be used in that perspective. To accomplish this objective, the Energy System Optimization Model TEMOA-Italy was used, based on the open-source platform TEMOA and developed at PoliTo as a tool to be used for technology assessment and energy scenarios analyses. The adopted assessment strategy includes two different scenarios to be compared with a business-as-usual one, which considers the application of current policies in a time horizon up to 2050. Since the focus concerns hydrogen penetration in the energy mix, the additional scenarios are based on up-to-date planned investments and deployment of this energy vector-related technologies as described in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, with the purpose of acquiring a critical view of what is proposed there. One scenario is based on constraints for hydrogen production as prescribed by the mentioned plan, with no constraints on its consumption. The second one develops in the opposite side, constraining consumption with no bounds on production. This two-way route provides a touchstone of the distance of the planned policies from optimal conditions and also constitutes a critical analysis of the Italian objectives, revealing possible improvements of various steps of the decarbonization pathway. The necessity of exploiting all the available technologies for meeting environmental objectives is also hereby underlined by the results of the two scenarios and, in line with the European Commission open science guidelines, the transparency and the robustness of the presented results is ensured by the adoption of the open-source open-data model such as the TEMOA-Italy.