(701a) A Multi-Objective Decision-Making Framework for Renewable Energy Transportation

Energy transition is gaining pace in the world with heightened awareness of the environmental effects and health impacts of fossil fuels, as well as concerns on security of energy supply along with decreasing cost of renewable energy deployment. In this regard, hydrogen economy, referring to the wide use of hydrogen and derived products as the main source of fuel, is regaining attention as hydrogen is regarded as a potential solution to address renewable intermittency, de-fossilization of hard-to-abate industries and long-term energy storage challenges [1,2]. However, the path towards de-fossilization presents significant additional challenges for many industrialized economies, as their domestic renewable energy generation is projected to be insufficient to meet their energy and de-fossilization demands in the foreseeable future [3]. On the other hand, the imbalance of renewable energy generation potential, levelized cost and demand in between different geographies demonstrates the potential of a future global green energy economy, through the trade of green fuels. This potential and need call for modeling frameworks that capture the specific needs of decision-makers to make informed decisions.

In this research, we present a framework for modeling and optimizing decisions for the selection of an optimal hydrogen-based energy carrier for transporting renewable energy considering different locations, transportation mediums and often conflicting objectives. The important features of the potential energy carriers of the future are determined and weighted employing a survey addressed to energy executives. The resulting decision-making problem is modelled as a multi-objective optimization problem through Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP), while the weights of different objectives are determined with respect to Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) [4]. A case study of transporting renewable energy from different locations with low levelized cost of electricity to a highly industrialized region with insufficient resources is considered to determine the suitable energy carrier and transport mechanism with respect to conflicting objectives.

References

[1] Veziroglu, T N, and Barbir, F. Hydrogen: Its comparison with fossil fuels and its potential as a universal fuel. United States:1993.

[2] International Energy Agency, The Future of Hydrogen, 2019

[3] The National Hydrogen Strategy, BMWi, 2020

[4] Saaty, TL., The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), The Journal of the Operational Research Society 41(11)