An Economic and Environmental Assessment Model for Selecting the Optimal Implementation Strategy of Fuel Cell Systems—A Focus on Building Energy Policy

Considerable effort is being made to reduce the primary energy consumption in buildings. As part of this effort, fuel cell systems are attracting attention as a new/renewable energy systems for several reasons: (i) distributed generation system; (ii) combined heat and power system; and (iii) availability of various sources of hydrogen in the future. Therefore, this study aimed to develop an economic and environmental assessment model for selecting the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system, focusing on building energy policy. This study selected two types of buildings (<i>i.e</i>., residential buildings and non-residential buildings) as the target buildings and considered two types of building energy policies (<i>i.e</i>., the standard of energy cost calculation and the standard of a government subsidy). This study established the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system in terms of the life cycle cost and life cycle CO₂ emissions. For the residential building, it is recommended that the subsidy level and the system marginal price level be increased. For the non-residential building, it is recommended that gas energy cost be decreased and the system marginal price level be increased. The developed model could be applied to any other country or any other type of building according to building energy policy.