Public Policy Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2803
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Item AN INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF THE FUTURE “HYDROGEN ECONOMY”: DECARBONIZATION POTENTIAL, SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS, AND POLICY APPROACHES(2024) O'Rourke, Patrick Robert; Hultman, Nathan; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recently clean hydrogen has captured the attention of policy communities, as evidenced by the publication of hydrogen “roadmaps” or “strategies” by dozens of nations. This is partly because it can be produced from numerous primary energy resources and utilized in a plethora of ways to enable decarbonization. However, there remain open questions as to how the energy carrier should contribute toward carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation. Additionally, less is known about its impacts on other societal objectives and whether government plans for hydrogen are driven by realistic expectations regarding its ability to facilitate emissions reductions. This dissertation involves three studies which simulate energy transitions within the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM), each aiming to help illuminate hydrogen’s potential impact on society. First, clean hydrogen supply and demand within the context of decarbonization is investigated. In this research, it is found that hydrogen could be a decentralized energy carrier, as a large portion of its production is enabled by onsite production (i.e., at the location of the end user). In terms of demand, although it will represent a smaller portion of global final energy compared to alternatives, hydrogen enables CO2 mitigation in difficult-to-electrify end uses (e.g., satiating demand for industrial high-temperature heat). The second topic of this dissertation examines hydrogen’s potential implications for the water-energy-food nexus. It is found that clean hydrogen production is unlikely to be a large source of water demand, however, its availability in the forthcoming energy transition could cause larger indirect changes in water demand for many regions of the world. Additionally, clean hydrogen availability is found to enable lower staple crop prices, as it provides a method of reducing CO2 associated with fertilizer manufacturing. Lastly, this dissertation analyzed the Japanese and Korean national hydrogen plans. Aligning with the results from the first research topic of this work, hydrogen’s use within their economies is lower than alternative decarbonization strategies (e.g., direct electrification). As a result, the national plans of both nations are found to be overestimating the scale of hydrogen supply. Further, both countries are generally setting numerical goals for hydrogen deployment in areas of the economy that are less economically efficient compared to alternative sectors where it could both facilitate decarbonization as well as bolster their economies.Item LOW-CARBON TECHNOLOGIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION POLICY IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD(2015) Iyer, Gokul; Hultman, Nathan E; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)It is widely acknowledged that an important element of climate change mitigation policy will be the development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. This dissertation uses the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), a global integrated assessment model to study the relationships between technology and policy in the context of global climate change mitigation under three "imperfect" circumstances, namely, constraints on the rate of diffusion of low-carbon technologies, countries promoting the deployment of low-carbon technologies based on national priorities and preferences and variation in investment risks across technologies and regions. These conditions deviate from conventional idealized assumptions and thus represent an "imperfect" world. The first essay shows that factors including social, behavioral and institutional that might constrain the rate of diffusion of low-carbon technologies even in the presence of favorable climate policies have sizeable impacts on the costs and feasibility of achieving stringent climate targets. Such impacts are greatly amplified with major delays in serious climate policies. The second essay illustrates the divergence between domestic and global outcomes when countries promote the deployment of specific low-carbon technologies in the near-term. In this essay, I show that a globally cost-effective, near-term international technology investment strategy to achieve a long-term climate goal is a diversified international technology investment portfolio across countries. This essay also explores the degree to which independent national technology deployment policies align with collaboratively determined regimes. I show that conditions exist under which there are substantial gains to international cooperation in the development and deployment of diverse low-carbon technologies but also circumstances in which domestic outcomes align with the global outcome. The third essay focuses on the variation of investment risks across technologies and regions in the electricity generation sector. I find that by taking into account such variation, achieving an emissions mitigation goal is up to 40% higher than it would be in a world with uniform investment risks. Additionally, industrialized countries mitigate more and developing countries mitigate less. The three essays together underscore the importance of policies aimed at developing capabilities and fostering international cooperation in the development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies to achieve climate change mitigation cost-effectively.