[en] Current knowledge indicates that Germany will have to rely on importing hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives to achieve its ambitious targets. The country’s own economical potentials for electricity generation from renewables are too limited to be able to meet the projected demand using domestic production alone. So far, analyses of the economic viability of imports have usually been based on calculating the potential production and transportation costs. However, these calculations fall short, as the market prices for imported energy products such as gas and oil are strongly decoupled from production costs and are often significantly higher or display high price volatilities. Against this background, for the first time, an approach was presented for how to envisage a future emerging market and how to move from production costs to prices. First implementation steps were presented and conclusions drawn. The first methodological step assumes a perfect market. Under this assumption, marginal cost pricing can be derived from the intersection of the supply and demand curves. In addition to the cost potential curves for supplying hydrogen and its derivatives, demand curves for these products have to be determined. Cost potential curves are based on techno-economic analyses. The demand curves must take into account the willingness to pay and competitive options for defossilization, which vary in different fields of application. So-called no-regret sectors, such as iron and steel or international aviation, where there are few alternatives to hydrogen and its derivatives for reducing greenhouse gases, will be prepared to pay a higher price than, e.g., road transport with its option of direct electrification. Transportation costs must also be included, which can make up a significant share of the import costs, especially for hydrogen, depending on the distance and type of transportation involved. Transporting hydrogen using repurposed pipelines is cheaper over distances of a few thousand kilometers than transporting liquid hydrogen or its derivatives by ship. This suggests that transnational price regions for hydrogen could emerge to start with along these transport routes, as is the case on today‘s gas market. MENA regions or regions in Eastern Europe such as the Ukraine or Kazakhstan could be exporters of interest here. Since established global markets already exist for derivatives such as methanol or ammonia produced using fossil fuels, and since transport costs over distances of more than 5,000 km have a much lower impact, global markets could also be established here for renewably produced derivatives. In addition to transportation costs, flexibility and the security of supply must also be considered in the evaluation. Shipping offers the opportunity to change transport routes at short notice, e.g., due to political unrest or price changes, and increases supply diversification. References are made here to similarities on the natural gas market. A possible first approach to more accurate pricing is to take country-specific risks into account via the corresponding costs of capital. Equity risk premiums can be used here that are already available for countries. Calculations show that a realistic premium of five to ten percentage points on the costs of capital compared to Germany and other EU countries would have a strong negative affect on the economic viability of importing hydrogen from the MENA region compared to producing hydrogen in the EU. Quantifying country risks as much as possible is thus an important element when analyzing future prices of hydrogen and its derivatives. They also form an important basis for designing policy measures, e.g., by taking on credit default risks. It can also be shown that different time phases should be considered when analyzing market price formation. The current state of knowledge suggests different pricing mechanisms will emerge, at least during the transitional period. These can be based on the emergence of the gas markets. After the pilot phase, it is assumed that bilateral contracts and oligopoly markets with strategic behavior will have a major role. Legal regulations and support will play important roles in shaping the market. The concept is further developed and implemented in the HYPAT project.

[en] Hydrogen and synthesis products are considered to be of high importance in future energy systems and therefore play an increasing role in climate change mitigation strategies. This working paper provides an overview of scenarios for the future development of hydrogen demand from a global perspective. The results show the range of possible developments in total as well as for the sectors industry, buildings and transport. Next to worldwide demand, results for the EU and China are disclosed. The bandwidths of hydrogen demand have been determined based on over 40 recently published energy system and hydrogen scenarios. The focus is on scenarios with ambitious reduction targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the following, these scenarios are referred to as "focus scenarios". In addition, the projected hydrogen demand is compared to the bandwidth of over 300 mitigation scenarios from the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), referred to as "IPCC scenarios".