Overview

This talk presented a data-driven investment and planning framework for designing a cost-effective, low-carbon hydrogen transportation system, with a focus on green hydrogen in Texas. Recognizing hydrogen’s role as a cross-sector energy carrier—and the geographic mismatch between renewable hydrogen production and demand centers—the research addressed how to optimally deploy transportation infrastructure to support large-scale hydrogen adoption while balancing cost, emissions, and long-term uncertainty.

 
Expert Insights & Key Takeaways

Transportation is a critical bottleneck for green hydrogen
While Texas has abundant renewable resources to produce green hydrogen, transporting it efficiently to demand centers remains a major challenge due to long distances, high capital costs, and infrastructure deployment timelines.

Optimization-based planning enables better investment decisions
The study developed a comprehensive optimization model that minimizes the levelized cost of hydrogen transportation while explicitly accounting for capital costs, operating costs, hydrogen losses, carbon emissions, and unmet demand penalties.

Pipelines dominate at high demand and long distances
Results show that pipelines become the most cost-effective and low-emission option as hydrogen demand scales and transport distances increase, despite their high upfront capital costs.

Trucks and trailers play an important early-stage role
At lower demand levels or during early deployment phases, tube trailers and liquid hydrogen trucks provide flexibility and avoid premature pipeline investment.

Construction timelines strongly influence optimal outcomes
Delays in pipeline construction significantly reduce their deployment in optimal solutions, highlighting the importance of streamlined permitting and faster build-out to unlock long-term benefits.

Hydrogen hubs enable flexible distribution strategies
Hub-based transportation networks reduce reliance on direct point-to-point delivery and allow more adaptive use of trucks, trailers, and pipelines—especially in regions with dispersed demand.

Policy relevance and planning value
The framework provides quantitative insights for policymakers and planners to evaluate trade-offs between transportation modes, emissions limits, investment timing, and infrastructure scale under uncertainty.

Future Outlook

As hydrogen demand grows, especially for transportation and industrial applications, strategic, optimized infrastructure investment will be essential to ensure affordability and sustainability. Future work will enhance realism by incorporating actual transportation routes, hydrogen storage at hubs, community and environmental impact metrics, and evolving regulatory conditions—further strengthening the model’s value as a decision-support tool for Texas and other emerging hydrogen hubs.

Guest Speakers

Jian Shi

Associate Professor

Electrical Power Engineering Technology

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