Production costs and greenhouse gas mitigation potential of hydrogen-enhanced biomethane and bio-SNG production

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU aims to defossilize the gas sector. The utilization of hydrogen-enhanced biomethane and bio-SNG production can significantly decrease the carbon footprint of energy production and consumption, contributing to global efforts to combat climate change. A central part of this work is the cost minimization of a hybrid energy model supplying electricity to an alkaline electrolyzer for hydrogen production. The novelty of this work lies in the linear optimization of the yearly electricity costs based on a previous study. The results are promising in comparison to the existing literature. Although the production costs increased against the biomass-based reference cases, the costs of enhanced production are lower than in many power-to-gas concepts where CO₂ is first captured and then used for synthetic methane production. The results of the GHG mitigation potential showed that hydrogen integration has the potential to contribute to greenhouse gas mitigation in the EU.