Super Sustainability through Hydrogen Cities – An Overview

The concept of hydrogen cities is an old dream of achieving super sustainable integrated energy systems. Practically, it starts with the Danish dream H2Pia which is a complete urban community based on variable renewable energy, and hydrogen technologies as the sources of energy for various types and classes of loads. These loads include electrical and thermal loads. The H2Pia concept is then extended worldwide due to its super-sustainable performance. Examples include the first future Chinese hydrogen city, and the French ‘Energy Observer’ which is 100% clean energy floating boat city. This paper presents a brief overview the main drivers toward the hydrogen cities, the main associated technologies, and the related challenges. The overview shows that reliance on standalone 100% hydrogen-based renewable and sustainable energy systems can be achieved with the currently available technologies. In addition, more R&D are required for achieving acceptable economical, and technical performances.

氢能城市（hydrogen cities）的构想，乃是实现超级可持续综合能源系统的久远愿景。实际上，这一理念发轫于丹麦的H2Pia项目——这是一套以可变可再生能源与氢能技术作为各类负荷能源供给来源的完整城市社区能源系统，此类负荷涵盖电力负荷与热负荷。凭借其卓越的可持续性能，H2Pia的理念随后在全球范围内得到推广，典型案例包括中国首个未来氢能城市，以及法国“能源观察者号（Energy Observer）”——这艘全清洁能源驱动的浮动船城。本文简要概述了氢能城市发展的核心驱动力、相关核心技术以及面临的各类挑战。本次概述表明，依托现有技术即可构建完全基于氢能的独立型可再生可持续能源系统。此外，为达成令人满意的经济与技术性能表现，仍需开展更多研发（R&D）工作。