This study completes a three-year (2019-2021) activity aimed at researching technological solutions that enable the use of hydrogen in industrial sector processes. The aim of the activity was to identify the potential for hydrogen penetration that can contribute to the European goal of total decarbonization envisioned for 2050.
Scenarios and strategies have been proposed that envisage the massive use of hydrogen in “hard-to-abate” sectors. In particular, hydrogen can be used in steelmaking both as a reducing agent to replace coal and methane and as a fuel to replace fossil fuels. A fully hydrogen-based steel industry is technically feasible relatively quickly. In this study, a possible road map for the transformation of the current Italian steel industry into a fully hydrogen-based industry was presented. The main directions for the use of hydrogen in thermal processes in the glass and cement industries, replacing natural gas, were also summarized. The steel road map makes it possible to achieve an almost complete abatement of CO2 emissions by 2050, with investments that are largely within the reach of a large industrial system like Italy’s. Integration with diffuse emission abatement solutions, for example with electrification, would lead to the achievement of carbon neutrality.
An estimate has been made of the amount of hydrogen required for the proposed strategies to be implemented. The volumes required and the energy needed to produce them are enormous and, if calculated carefully, are greater than the availability projected for the next few decades by estimates of growth in hydrogen production. It will thus be necessary to create a virtuous industrial system capable of producing energy from renewable sources and hydrogen, with the industrial capacity to produce and use electrolyzers, and possibly also with an infrastructure to transport hydrogen imported from abroad.