Hydrogen fuel-cell heavy-duty mobility applications, including trucks and buses, are rapidly falling in cost as scale builds, a panel of experts agreed at the World Hydrogen Summit yesterday. The point where the total cost of ownership becomes competitive with conventional equivalents is now within sight.

“The value proposition for fuel cells in mobility applications is strongest, where you have vehicles that have heavy weight, high utilisation requirements, long daily range requirements and a need for fast refuelling,” said Randy MacEwen, president & CEO of Ballard Power Systems, adding that the case is strongest where commercial vehicles or vessels return to a centralised location for refuelling.

“It is really about getting cheap green hydrogen to the pump” Teichmann, Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies

“These are applications that consume a lot of fuel—if you get a number of vehicles using the same fuelling infrastructure, the economics are better… These are applications that disproportionately contribute to emissions and to date have been very difficult to abate.” There are 3,200 buses and trucks using Ballard fuel cells in service. “That is a very good install base… That is transitioning the discussion from ‘does the technology work?’ to ‘how do we get it cost effective?’”, says MacEwen.

“What we see now are very credible pathways over the next two-to-three years in the bus market, in my opinion, and between 2025 and 2030 in a number of other mobility applications, including long-haul trucks, including regional trucks, as well as some of the marine and rail applications. We see the total cost of ownership crossover points occurring as the industry scales and as costs come down. No longer will we see a need for subsidies.”

MacEwen said he thinks the first “large market” will be buses, then commercial trucks, rail and finally marine. “We expect to see hundreds of thousands of these vehicles in the field by 2030.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly Jo Bamford, founder and executive chairman of Ryse Hydrogen and chairman of Wrightbus “wholeheartedly agrees”. Bamford is working across the value chain, creating demand in the UK by manufacturing buses as well as producing and supplying hydrogen through Ryse.

“You get mass adoption when it costs the same” Bamford, Ryse

He says buses are the “first, best use case” and highlights the advantage of quick refuelling, suggesting a battery electric bus fleet may need to be 40-50pc larger and perhaps twice as expensive. Establishing hydrogen in buses would build the scale that would facilitate the price decreases needed for adoption in other sectors.

“You get mass adoption when it costs the same,” he says. “Fundamentally, if you can find a zero-emission solution that costs the same and is as easy to fill up as the incumbent, I think you get mass adoption now. We are not far off that... As you watch the cost curves come along, I think we will get to mass adoption around 2025.”

Bamford says that there needs to be a “little bit more” work done on storage and transportation, as well as the supply chain generally.

Storage and transportation

One of the leading contenders for storing and transporting hydrogen is in liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC), which was the focus of a major project announced in Germany last week.

“It is really about getting cheap green hydrogen to the pump,” said Daniel Teichmann, CEO & Founder, Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies. “There is this missing link between geographies with abundance of renewable energy, where it is very cheap and a lot of it is available, and… countries and geographies with limited potential, with some restrictions. And you have… inner city refuelling stations where you need to have large amounts of hydrogen. That is exactly what we are targeting.”

“The value proposition for fuel cells in mobility applications is strongest” MacEwen, Ballard Power Systems

He says he sees many markets, from glass manufacturers to steel plants, but “we also want to address the mobility market and can supply large-scale hydrogen refuelling stations”.

Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies will open the first hydrogen refuelling station supplied by LOHC with H2Mobility in Germany this year. “That is an important milestone for us,” he said.

LOHC is also highly suitable for large-scale shipping. The advantage of this method is that it can use existing diesel tanks in maritime settings without expensive conversion “and the port would leverage the same infrastructure,” said Teichmann.

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Author: Alastair O’Dell<BR>Senior Editor