Influence of hydrogen import prices on hydropower systems in climate-neutral Europe

Abstract

While climate and energy policy targets require fundamental changes and expansions in the energy infrastructure, hydropower systems across Europe remain essential for low-carbon energy systems. With renewable fuel import prices being subject to large uncertainties, this work aims to substantiate the relationship between these fuel import prices and multireservoir hydropower systems in a climate-neutral energy system. To that end, three green hydrogen import price scenarios are combined with two aggregated modelling approaches for pan-European hydropower assets. Using the integrated energy system model SCOPE SD, the analysis shows that import prices for green hydrogen have a significant impact on European electricity generation (+ 595 GW el and + 650 TWh el /yr), domestic hydrogen production (+ 396 TWh th /yr), and water values of European hydropower assets (+ 33 % of average value in Norway). The results further indicate that the different aggregation methods only have a minor impact, suggesting that the computationally more efficient approach with up to 90% reductions in solution time provides suitable approximations of hydropower generation and flexibility in future analyses.