Life cycle assessment of the electrolytic production and utilization of low carbon hydrogen vehicle fuel Tim Patterson*, Sandra Esteves, Stephen Carr, Fan Zhang, James Reed, Jon Maddy, Alan Guwy Sustainable Environment Research Centre (SERC), Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, Wales CF37 1DL, UK article info Article history: Received 23 September 2013 Received in revised form 31 January 2014 Accepted 7 February 2014 Available online 4 April 2014 Keywords: Hydrogen Electrolysis Wind Photovoltaic LCA Vehicle fuel abstract Environmental burdens associated with small scale (40 L hydrogen per minute) production of hydrogen fuel using electrolysis powered by electricity generated from stand-alone wind turbines (30 kW), stand-alone photovoltaic panels (3 kW peak) and UK grid electricity (current and future) has been undertaken. Utilization of fuel within a proton exchange membrane fuel cell passenger vehicle was included and compared to the operation of a petrol vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle fuelled with non-renewable hydrogen, and an electric (battery only) vehicle. The production of renewable hydrogen from wind energy incurs increased climate change burdens compared with extraction and processing of fossil petrol (0.09 mPt compared with 0.07 mPt). However, lower burdens for fossil fuel (1.85 mPt) and climate change (0.26 mPt) are realised by the renewable hydrogen options compared with petrol (4.44 mPt and 0.44 mPt, respectively) following utilization of the fuel due to lower emissions at end use. Utilizing a combination of renewable hydrogen fuelled vehicles and grid powered electric vehicles was considered to be a viable option for meeting UK policy ambitions. Copyright ª 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Hydrogen can be produced by passing an electrical current through pure water within an electrolyser, with hydrogen liberated at the negatively charged cathode and oxygen liberated at the positively charged anode. The ability to utilize primary electrical energy from renewable sources such as wind turbine or photovoltaic derived electricity to drive this process raises the potential to produce hydrogen (and oxygen) via low carbon, fully scalable distributed points. One potential future application of the process is to generate hydrogen vehicle fuel on a local or regional basis, either at the point of fuel distribution (i.e. the service station) or at a regional ‘hub’ for distribution to a number of local refuelling facilities. State of the art industrial electrolysis includes the use of alkaline electrolysers and, increasingly, proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers. These have a nominal hydrogen production efficiency of around 70e80% [1] although some configurations of renewable energy technologies and PEM electrolysers can have higher energetic efficiencies within limited operational ranges [2]. Therefore, there is still a strong argument at present to dedicate renewable technolo- gies such as wind turbines to direct electricity production as * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 (0)1443 483688; fax: þ44 (0)1443 482285. E-mail address: tim.patterson@southwales.ac.uk (T. Patterson). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy 39 (2014) 7190 e7201 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2014.02.044 0360-3199/Copyright ª 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.