Economics of producing hydrogen as transportation fuel using offshore wind energy systems

Over the past few years, hydrogen has been recognized as a suitable substitute for present vehicular fuels. This paper covers the economic analysis of one of the most promising hydrogen production methods—using wind energy for producing hydrogen through electrolysis of seawater—with a concentration on the Indian transport sector. The analysis provides insights about several questions such as the advantages of offshore plants over coastal installations, economics of large wind-machine clusters, and comparison of cost of producing hydrogen with competing gasoline. Robustness of results has been checked by developing several scenarios such as fast/slow learning rates for wind systems for determining future trends. Results of this analysis show that use of hydrogen for transportation is not likely to be attractive before 2012, and that too with considerable learning in wind, electrolyzer and hydrogen storage technology.