A review of shipping cost projections for hydrogen-based energy carriers.

Estimates on the costs of renewable energy supply by hydrogen and hydrogen-based derivatives such as ammonia or organic compounds (e.g., synthetic methane, methanol, Fischer-Tropsch fuels) vary substantially among current publications. Hence, comprehensive analyses of each stage of the renewable energy supply chain are necessary, with ship transportation as the focus of this work. Shipping cost projections for various hydrogen-based derivatives from a wide range of recent international publications are compared, identifying uncertainties and research gaps in the shipping of Power-to-X energy carriers. While transportation costs in literature reveal a consistent picture for liquid ammonia, projections for liquid hydrogen, LOHCs, and, surprisingly, also for methanol, Fischer-Tropsch fuels and liquid methane differ significantly. Technological and economic assumptions contributing to the discrepancies are discussed. A sensitivity analysis is provided to quantify the effects of divergent assumptions for different parameters on shipping costs. • Projections of future ammonia shipping costs are quite consistent. • Cost projections for hydrogen diverge as large-scale shipping is not established. • Cost projections for hydrocarbon energy carriers reveal significant inconsistencies. • Discrepancies mainly attribute to ship's speed, lifetime and CAPEX assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]