Prospects for interregional energy transportation in a CO2-constrained world.

In this paper, a regionally disaggregated global energy model treating energy and CO₂ transportation in detail is used to examine a cost-effective pattern for their interregional transportation over the 21st century under the CO₂ stabilization target of 550 ppm. Also, we assess future perspectives for the hydrogen economy in such a scenario. The results show that as major petroleum and gas supplies shift to unconventional resources along the second half of this century due to resource depletion, the Middle East loses its importance as a petroleum and gas exporter and the global patterns of their transportation change significantly. We then show that while hydrogen's competitiveness decreases due to the detailed treatment of energy and CO₂ transportation, biomass- derived Fischer­Tropsch (FT) fuels become attractive because their production facilitates a wide diffusion of CO₂-neutral energy carriers by considerably reducing the transportation cost. FT fuels are produced in regions rich in forest resources and then transported on a large scale by tanker. By contrast, hydrogen is produced mainly at the center of its consumption regions using domestic feedstock, and its interregional delivery, which is done only by pipeline, plays a marginal role due to its high transportation cost. It is confirmed that such a hydrogen supply structure offers energy security benefits. Finally, we show that the regional distribution of CO₂ storage capacity is a major determinant of the pattern of hydrogen transportation around 2100, because all the CO₂ generated from hydrogen production is required to be captured for sequestration in that period and because interregional CO₂ transportation is hardly chosen for economic reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]