Fuel cells were first developed over a century ago but have not emerged as a dominant choice for stationary (for example, power generation) or transportation (for example, fuel cell electric vehicles) applications due to tough competition from other technologies with more favorable value propositions, such as internal combustion engines. There is a dearth of independently-developed cost and performance estimates for fuel cells due to a historical lack of transparency around products and projects; a relatively small number of real-world projects, often with highly site/project-specific requirements; and the ability of fuel cells to be used for numerous, sometimes niche, applications. Fuel cells continue to garner interest as a potential key component of a decarbonized economy. However, even less is understood about the techno-economics of larger fuel cell systems directly fueled (fed) by hydrogen (that is, as opposed to systems that feed a hydrocarbon fuel through a fuel processor to extract hydrogen to then feed into a fuel cell).
This is an executive summary for Fuel Cell Technology Assessment—Potential Future Costs and Low-Carbon Fuel Considerations (3002026233). While sharing some of the limitations inherent to the current fuel cell literature, this research uses foundational insights on fuel cells obtained from 2022 Fuel Cell Technology Assessment: Current State and Look Ahead (3002025147) to develop cost projections to provide a coherent narrative around the prospects and potential future costs of transportation and stationary fuel cells, as well as potential implications of direct hydrogen fueling of selected stationary fuel cells.