Power-to-gas in electricity markets dominated by renewables

We find that power-to-gas plants are not profitable under current market conditions: even under the most optimistic assumptions for the cost and revenue parameters, power-to-gas plants need to run for many hours during the year at very low prices (i.e. the long-term willingness to pay for electricity is very low) that do not currently exist in Europe. In an optimistic future scenario regarding investment costs, efficiency and revenues of power-to-gas, however, the long-term willingness to pay for electricity is higher than the lowest recently observed day-ahead electricity prices. When prices remain at this low level, investments in power-to-gas can thus become profitable.