Mapping Future Energy Journeys Through Modeling the Global Transport of Synthetic Energy Carriers.

Export regions linked to importers via retrofit-ready pipelines stay competitive across 10,883 production locations and seven scenarios, even with only moderate renewable potential.

• Why it matters: Trade in synthetic energy carriers hinges on total supply costs, but corridor-level guidance is needed to connect production regions to demand centers efficiently.
• What they did: The study builds a spatial heuristic that combines hydrogen production costs with transport infrastructure and conversion steps (synthesis, cracking, reformation) to map import corridors across seven scenarios.
• The result: Competitiveness depends on pipeline retrofit access for near exporters and on port/coastal access for remote exporters; hydrogen fits short pipelines, ammonia fits maritime, and methanol/methane fit long multimodal chains.

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