What Happened to the Green Hydrogen Boom?
Haley Zaremba

This week, 37 hydrogen-powered buses were delivered to Bologna, Italy, marking the first phase of a large-scale order placed by the transport operator TPER. At the tail end of 2023, TPER ordered 137 hydrogen buses to be deployed in Bologna and nearby Ferrara as part of a broader effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. The project was co-funded by TPER and through European Union funds from the bloc’s post-pandemic recovery plan.

"The delivery of the first hydrogen buses to Bologna represents a significant milestone in the advancement of sustainable public transport. The Urbino 12 hydrogen buses will help improve air quality, enhancing the well-being of residents in the city and the region," said Javier Iriarte, CEO of Solaris Bus & Coach, the firm that manufactured the hydrogen buses.

But while Solaris and TPER are celebrating what they are heralding as the dawn of a new hydrogen era, other experts are saying that these baby steps forward for the hydrogen-powered transport industry are far too little, too late. “In the first half of 2024, the global market for hydrogen fuel cell cars was just 5,621 units. In the same period, 4.5 million battery electric vehicles were sold,” Forbes recently reported. “It’s clear that hydrogen isn’t winning for personal passenger transport.” 

In fact, hydrogen doesn’t seem to be winning much of anything yet. Despite lofty global targets, less than a tenth of planned green hydrogen projects around the world had been implemented as of 2023. Tracking 190 projects over 3 years, a recent study identified “a wide 2023 implementation gap with only 7% of global capacity announcements finished on schedule.” 

Scientists and policy-makers have long been hopeful that green hydrogen would form a key part of decarbonization strategies, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors like transport, steelmaking, and shipping. But a couple decades into this plan, it’s clear that the challenges for a switch to green hydrogen seem to still outweigh the benefits in many, if not most, target sectors.

In cars, batteries are just much more efficient and cost-effective than hydrogen. Professor David Cebon from the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight has calculated that electric vehicle batteries are three times more efficient than hydrogen fuel cells in terms of power generation to delivery. 

And then there’s the issue of storing hydrogen. “If you keep it as a gas, you must compress the hydrogen to a very high level to reduce the volume sufficiently. You then must put it into a tank that can hold that high pressure system. I haven’t seen the technology that can do it at a cost structure that works,” says Mike Nakrani, CEO of VEV, a Vitol-backed firm offering scaled enterprise electric fleet solutions.

While Forbes reports that you shouldn't hold your breath for hydrogen cars or trucks, other experts are saying that hydrogen “won’t fly” for aviation, either. Noted hydrogen skeptic Michael Barnard recently noted that many early backers of hydrogen-powered aviation have quietly gone under or eliminated hydrogen from their agendas altogether as technology has not been able to counter the significant costs and challenges – including “certification challenges, the storage challenges, the airframe challenges, the balance of aircraft during flight challenges, the cost challenges, or the airport infrastructure challenges” – associated with hydrogen fuel cells. 

“The economics don’t add up,” Barnard writes. “Developing new aircraft designs, overhauling airport infrastructure, and ensuring safety compliance would be extremely expensive. With more practical alternatives like sustainable aviation fuels and battery-electric aircraft emerging, hydrogen can’t compete.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

  

 

 

Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She has extensive experience writing and editing environmental features, travel pieces, local news in the Bay Area, and music/culture reviews.

 

 

 

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