Optimising green hydrogen production across Europe: How renewable energy sources shape plant design and costs

Green hydrogen is widely recognised as a key enabler for decarbonising heavy industry and long-haul transport. However, producing it cost-competitively from variable renewable energy sources presents design challenges. In this study, a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) optimisation framework is developed to minimise the levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) from renewable-powered electrolysers. The analysis covers all European countries and explores how wind and solar resource availability influences the optimal sizing of renewable generators, electrolysers, hydrogen storage, and batteries under both current and future scenarios. Results show that renewable resource quality strongly affects system design and hydrogen costs. At present, solar-only systems yield LCOH values of 7.4-24.7 €/kg, whereas wind-only systems achieve lower costs (5.1-17.1 €/kg) due to higher capacity factors and reduced storage requirements. Hybrid systems, combining solar and wind, emerge as the most cost-effective solution, reducing average LCOH by 57% compared to solar-only systems and 25% compared to wind-only systems, effectively narrowing geographical cost disparities. In the future scenario, LCOH declines to 3-4 €/kg, confirming renewable hydrogen’s potential to become economically competitive throughout Europe. A key contribution of this work is the derivation of design guidelines by correlating renewable resource quality with technical, energy and economic indicators.