Curious about the full scenario landscape? Dive into the open-access paper! 📖🌐

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Import choices shape infrastructure needs:

Smaller size of the hydrogen network when green fuels and materials are imported at scale and ammonia- or steel-making can relocate within Europe.

Keeping some European power-to-X in Europe has some advantages:

Flexible operation helps balancing wind and solar variability.

Its waste heat could be supplied to district heating systems in urban areas.

Using Europe’s biogenic and industrial CO₂ streams means lower dependency on DAC.

Only focusing on direct hydrogen imports cuts cost benefit in half.

Imports of derivative products like ammonia and methanol are preferred

Importing green energy and steel products (like HBI) has some advantages:

System costs fall by 1–10 % across a ±20% import cost range

In this range, cost-effective import volumes range between 1000 and 2000 TWh (~30-60 Mt H₂-eq)

No cost savings beyond imports of 3000 TWh (~90 Mt H₂-eq)

What we explored:

A full sweep of scenarios, interpolating between complete self-sufficiency and wide-ranging imports, plus sensitivity tests on low vs. high import prices and on excluding specific vectors to map the cost-effective space.

What we learned:

It really was a fascinating conversation. He's very good on Russia and decarbonisation, and stood his ground when I pushed him pretty hard on energy costs and hydrogen.
youtu.be/BsK-MhUH09c?...

On a stage with style!

And greetings from the Tauernpass. I might not respond immediately -
busy gasping for air 🚵‍♂️🫁

We also published a short research briefing alongside the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In the paper, we also explore some more scenarios, e.g. with none or only one of the networks available. So if you're curios about a detailed infrastructure view on Europe's Carbon Management Strategy, have a look! We look forward to your questions! 🌱

Of course, this was made with #PyPSA 😉

We also find that the combination of both networks remains advantageous when climate targets are tightened toward net CO₂ removal. The CO₂ network allows effective utilization of unavoidable industrial emissions through capture and transport to utilization or sequestration sites

We show that dividing tasks between networks can be cost-effective: hydrogen pipelines deliver hydrogen from the South to industrial centres for fuel synthesis, while CO₂ pipelines transport captured emissions from these clusters to geological sequestration sites, e.g., in the North Sea.

Also: Captured CO₂ from some residual industrial emissions, or biomass for negative emissions, will need to be transported to geological storage sites.