Designing a Cost-Effective Hydrogen Transport Infrastructure for Saudi Arabia’s Green Energy Transition

The shift towards a sustainable energy future has made green hydrogen one of the key elements of the long-term energy diversification and decarbonization policies in Saudi Arabia. Since the Kingdom has immense potential in terms of renewable energy sources and has a visionary national strategy of implementing the hydrogen economy, the development of effective and affordable transport infrastructure is essential to facilitate the use of large-scale hydrogen application. The proposed research paper constructs an optimization-based model to design domestic green hydrogen transportation network to reduce the total supply chain cost in Saudi Arabia. The suggested model takes into consideration eight cities of Saudi Arabia, for analysing numerous types of transportation: pipelines, compressed gas trailers, and liquid hydrogen tankers, which connect renewable production sites to industrial demand centres, refuelling stations, and storage facilities all over the Kingdom. A mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to ensure the optimization of transport modes configuration, and infrastructure capacities under uncertain demand scenarios. The objective of the model is to minimize the total system cost which includes the production, Storage and transportation cost, subject to technical, capacity, and geographical limits. The study will help in advancing the hydrogen roadmap in Saudi Arabia by providing a quantitative decision support instrument in the infrastructure planning and investment prioritization. The model is a strategic guide to policymakers and industry stakeholders who want to see a cost-effective and resilient domestic hydrogen logistics network that will facilitate green transition of energy and vision 2030 goals of the Kingdom.