Hydrogen as Option to Decarbonize Road Transport (eBook)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: 1,7, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this work is to provide a comprehensive view on whether hydrogen is an option to decarbonize heavy transport by conducting SLR to fill the existing research gap. The framework and classification of main contents are developed to synthesize scattered literature and obtain coherent knowledge at technical, environmental and economic levels. For this reason, a systematic literature review is conducted to take a holistic look at whether decarbonization of heavy vehicles can be achieved through hydrogen. This question is considered from technical, environmental, and economic perspectives. The result may be that hydro-gen is not an option for decarbonizing heavy vehicles for technical, environmental, or economic reasons. Or, if certain conditions are met, is a good option to reduce GHG emissions. Although there are other transportation modes in the transportation sector, such as the car or the train, this work is mainly limited to heavy-duty road transport, because here hydrogen has greater advantages, such as the higher benefit of range.

To answer the research question, this thesis is structured as follows, in chapter 1 the theoretical background is clarified, followed by the explanation of the methodology. In the main part of the thesis, the different perspectives from a technical, ecological and economic point of view are first highlighted. In the first part of the technical perspective, these include the hydrogen infrastructure, consisting of production, storage, delivery and the refuelling stations. Then, in the second part, the regional differences and the design of the trucks are elaborated. Finally, the main part addresses the environ-mental perspective through the GHG emission reduction potential and the economic perspective through the costs. Then, the benefits of hydrogen, the challenges to be overcome, and a comparison with other fuel options are discussed. The conclusion describes the implications of this study and future research areas.