Estimation of Production Costs of Synthetic Maritime Fuels Along the Global Gateway Green Shipping Corridors

In the context of the Global Gateway Green Shipping Corridors, an ambitious initiative to facilitate the transition to renewable and low carbon fuels for maritime transport in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, we explore potential areas where production costs can be competitive. We propose a methodology to rank 250 locations worldwide in terms of production costs of hydrogen and derived synthetic fuels as an initial screening indicator for potential production costs. The methodology uses the PyPSA software package, explicitly accounting for renewable energy capacity and technology costs, setting a common ground to benchmark locations in terms of their estimated levelized cost of fuel (LCOX). Results across the 250 locations determined ranges of 212–404.6 EUR/MWh for hydrogen, 258.3–414.3 EUR/MWh for ammonia, 308 to 478.4 EUR/MWh for methanol, and 298–466 EUR/MWh for methane. The optimal system designs tend to overbuild solar photovoltaic capacity, allowing for a higher utilization rate of the electrolyzer, the most expensive component of the system. This leads to lower production costs even though electricity production may need to be curtailed.