Cost-emission-flexibility trade-offs in China's power-hydrogen system: The system value of P2H2P

Chen, W., Ren, H., Yu, Y., & Keppo, I. (2026). Cost-emission-flexibility trade-offs in China's power-hydrogen system: The system value of P2H2P. Energy 361 e142076. 10.1016/j.energy.2026.142076.

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Abstract

China's net-zero transition demands a long-term energy system planning framework that balances flexibility, cost, and emissions. Here, we develop a multi-objective optimization model for China's integrated powerhydrogen system spanning 2025-2060, designed to analyze trade-offs between total system cost, cumulative CO2 emissions, and system flexibility. The model minimizes costs and emissions while maximizing the flexibility index, a capacity-based indicator reflecting the structural contribution of flexible technologies. Hydrogen technologies, including power-to-hydrogen-to-power (P2H2P), are modeled as long-duration energy storage resources or energy-shifting options complementing batteries. Using the epsilon-constraint method, we generate Pareto-optimal solutions under diverse carbon policy and hydrogen integration scenarios, selecting seven representative cases to illustrate distinct trade-off priorities. Our results show that enabling P2H2P significantly expands the system's flexibility frontier, supporting high penetration of wind and solar power with only a moderate cost increase. In contrast, if hydrogen use is restricted to end-use demand (i.e., no P2H2P), the system must rely more heavily on battery storage, leading to reduced flexibility and a sharp surge in marginal flexibility costs. While solutions optimized solely for cost and emissions yield favorable results in those metrics, excluding flexibility from the planning objective results in system configurations that rely more heavily on tight supplydemand balancing conditions and are more sensitive to renewable variability. Integrating flexibility as an explicit planning objective underscores the pivotal role of hydrogen-based long-duration storage in supporting a more structurally robust, cost-effective, and low-carbon power system transition in China.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Power-hydrogen system, System flexibility, Multi-objective optimization
Research Programs:	Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) > Systemic Risk and Resilience (SYRR)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	12 Aug 2026 08:39
Last Modified:	12 Aug 2026 08:39
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/21800

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