Hydrogen or methanol in the transportation sector?

Governmental policies and international treaties that aim at curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases and local pollutants can be expected. These regulations will increase the competitiveness of CO2-neutral energy sources, i.e., renewables, nuclear or fossil fuels with CO2-sequestration. The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative competitiveness of methanol and hydrogen as fuels in the transportation sector. This is done using a global energy systems model, with a transportation module, where vehicle costs (fuel cell, reformer and storage tank), infrastructure, flexibility in fuel supply and biomass availability are treated explicitly. The model is then run under the assumption that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 should be stabilised at 400 ppm. Two main results emerge: (i) despite the stringent CO2 constraints, oil-based fuels remain dominant in the transportation sector over the next 50 years, and (ii) once a transition towards alternative fuels takes place, the preferred choice of fuel is hydrogen, even if we assume that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are substantially more costly than methanol fuel cell vehicles. Detailed sensitivity analyses with respect to a number of important parameters are carried out.