Techno-economic and life-cycle assessment of hydrogen production pathways in the Middle East and North African region

• SMR with CCS halves CI compared to SMR without, but triples hydrogen cost. • PV- and wind-based hydrogen have lowest CI but highest LCOH. • SMR CI is highly sensitive to capture efficiency and methane leakage. • High-efficiency CCS with renewables can match renewable CI at lower cost. Hydrogen is increasingly recognized as a versatile energy carrier with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across multiple sectors. This study investigates hydrogen production pathways in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with a focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Given the region’s abundant natural gas resources, steam methane reforming (SMR) with carbon capture and storage (CCS) emerges as a prominent production route, while solar photovoltaic (PV)- and wind-based hydrogen offer renewable alternatives. A combined techno-economic assessment and life cycle GHG analysis is conducted for SMR with and without CCS and benchmarked against median values of PV- and wind-based hydrogen in KSA. The analysis evaluates the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) and cradle-to-gate GHG emissions intensity (EI) across four pathways. SMR without CCS yields an LCOH of 0.44 USD/kgH 2 and a EI of 9.1 kgCO 2eq /kgH 2 , while SMR with CCS increases the cost to 1.54 USD/kgH 2 but reduces EI to 4.1 kgCO 2eq /kgH 2 . In comparison, renewable-based hydrogen exhibits considerably higher costs even excluding storage requirements needed to maintain a continuous supply similar to SMR, with PV-based production at 3.78 USD/kgH 2 (EI: 2.3 kgCO 2eq /kgH 2 ) and wind-based production at 4.01 USD/kgH 2 (EI: 0.92 kgCO 2eq /kgH 2 ). Sensitivity analysis indicates that the EI of SMR with CCS is strongly influenced by capture efficiency and upstream methane leakage. Overall, the findings indicate that SMR coupled with high-efficiency CCS, strict methane management, and renewable-powered electricity can achieve EIs comparable to those of renewable-based hydrogen, while maintaining a lower LCOH.