A preliminary assessment of wind generated hydrogen production potential to reduce the gasoline fuel used in road transport sector of Sweden

• Wind to hydrogen production potential was assessed for the transport sector of Sweden.
• Different land use restrictions to wind-hydrogen facility were taken into account.
• CO2 emission reduction potential and revenue saving of each county were estimated.
• Geographic Information System (GIS) tool was successfully used for this analysis.

Hydrogen produced with the help of local wind energy resource can be considered as a key energy carrier, which can play a major role in switching the transport fuels from fossil to renewable. In this paper, we preliminary assessed the wind generated hydrogen production potential in order to provide the environmentally clean, renewable and cheap fuel to the road transport sector of Sweden. Vestas-112 wind turbine (V-112) and proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer were used as main components. Land use restrictions related to wind to hydrogen energy installation were also taken into account. Geographic Information System (GIS) tool was used for this study. We estimated that in Sweden, 25,580 ktons/year of hydrogen can be produced by using local wind energy resource, which is equivalent to 860 TWh of energy. Moreover, by using per capita gasoline consumption of Sweden, it was also estimated that during year 2011, 2900 ktons of imported gasoline was used in transport sector, which emitted 8700 ktons of CO2 into the local atmosphere of country. It was also estimated that in Sweden, gasoline consumption and CO2 emission can be reduced to 50% by using only 530 ktons i.e. (2%) of total local wind generated hydrogen production.