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One factor that the hydrogen for vitality refrain is nice at is celebrating and amplifying acts 2 and three of the Odyssey of the Hydrogen Fleet, when governments unlock hundreds of thousands or tens of hundreds of thousands for hydrogen trials and cash-starved fleet homeowners throw it at a handful of hydrogen buses, vehicles or trains. One factor that the refrain is unhealthy at is even acknowledging, by no means thoughts preserving monitor of, acts 4, 5 and 6, the place the governmental faucets are shut, resulting in the fleet operators scrapping the hydrogen autos and getting battery electrical autos as a substitute, one thing that they need to have began with.
To help the hydrogen refrain to beat their cognitive biases, and as an informational inoculation for governmental apparatchiks and fleet operators which can be lagging in decarbonization, I’ve been having a little bit of enjoyable writing out and creating an infographic for the inevitable development of hydrogen fleets, and itemizing the place examples are on the trajectory.
Within the first installment, I coated three continents. In Europe, France had an entrant, with the commune of Pau abandoning its costly, hard-to-keep working municipal buses this yr. After I say costly, the funding was roughly one million euros per bus, when an equal Yutong electrical bus is roughly a 3rd that worth. Germany had a few entrants, with Decrease Saxony shuffling its 14 €6.7 million every small hydrogen passenger trains onto sidings to rust, one thing the close by state of Württemberg prevented just by doing a bit work with spreadsheets.
To not be outdone, Austria gave one million euros per car to Ikea — as a result of that international furnishings behemoth is strapped for money? — for 5 hydrogen supply vehicles, when €85,000 euros would have purchased a battery electrical supply truck with equal vary that would use the 22,000 public electrical car cost factors within the nation. Ikea’s poor hydrogen truck drivers, at the very least till the federal government stops paying for the hydrogen, will spend most of their time driving to and from the overall of seven hydrogen refueling stations within the nation.
Whereas India is quickly grid-tying its heavy rail, with the expectation of reaching 100% electrification within the subsequent yr, it additionally purchased a handful of tiny hydrogen trains to run over legacy heritage tracks carrying vacationers.
In North America, the epicenter of hydrogen fleet irrationality is California, which like Germany is affected by the hangover of being an early chief in decarbonization. It has legacy legal guidelines, funding, a scattering of infrastructure and a giant hydrogen refrain, so retains making the identical errors again and again. Enter Santa Cruz, with one more million per bus entrant within the tragicomedy.
Within the second installment I returned to Europe, the place Bavaria has completed testing of a single, tiny, two-car hydrogen prepare and goes to place it into operation for a couple of months in 2024 earlier than shunting it onto a siding, by no means to be heard from once more. Canada had a quick name out for Quebec’s three month, multi-million greenback trial of a tiny vacationer prepare on rural tracks this summer time, one thing which at the very least had the excellence of being explicitly time-limited, however the place the stench of historic Bombardier company welfare hung over the transaction, that long-lasting Quebec agency’s prepare division having been swallowed entire by Alstom a handful of years in the past.
And now, a couple of extra enactments of this play to spherical out the present checklist. As I’ve been writing these amusing tales during which the hydrogen refrain discordantly howls with pleasure at each tiny glimmer of immaterial volumes of autos working on their favourite fuel, whereas averting their eyes and clamping shut their lips when the fleets are deserted to rust, collaborators from world wide have been offering new examples of locations the place the tragicomedy has unfolded or is unfolding.
Let’s begin by touring again in time, to among the first stagings of this play. Maybe fittingly, one opened thus far off Broadway and so way back that its setting turned a jet set de rigeur cease over within the heady days of belief fund hipsters within the late 2000s, earlier than the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe erased their capability to skip flippantly over the constraints of getting precise jobs. Sure, we’re speaking Reykjavik in Iceland, and I want I have been kidding about it being a scorching place to celebration previous to the Nice Recession. That each one got here to crashing halt in 2008, after all, and Iceland stays the one nation that jailed the bankers accountable for the fiscal meltdown, a lesson that different international locations may have realized from.
Different international locations may have realized from their hydrogen tragicomedy as effectively. In some unspecified time in the future in these heady days Iceland had made the daring declare that it might be the primary hydrogen financial system on the earth. They opened the primary hydrogen refueling station on the earth in 2003, the Shell station in Grjótháls, which in 2008 was being known as a ghost station because it sat there, unused.
The primary fleet was, unsurprisingly, buses, a trial that the legendary wind vitality raconteur Paul Gipe identified to me. The European ECTOS program had three buses on the basaltic roads of the island nation from roughly 2001 to 2005, when the buses have been inevitably mothballed. This system was anticipated to value €7 million with the EU chipping in one million euros per bus. That’s about €12 million in 2023 {dollars}, in order that they undoubtedly paid a steep worth for being one of many first failures in a protracted, lengthy string of them over the previous twenty years. Iceland stayed within the pan-European hydrogen effort, with three hydrogen refueling stations within the nation at one level.
Someplace in there, they retrofitted a gasoline cell and a few hydrogen tanks onto a vacationer boat as an auxiliary energy unit, not a drive unit. That lasted a couple of yr so far as I can inform earlier than being predictably deserted.
Regardless of 20 years of failures and abandonment, there are nonetheless two working refueling stations and 20 entire gasoline cell highway autos within the nation, largely in a fleet of taxis. The fleet was, naturally, paid for by EU grants, particularly the Gas Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Enterprise (now Clear Hydrogen Partnership) underneath Grant Settlement No 671438 & No 700350. I’m positive someplace in Brussels somebody is aware of precisely what number of hundreds of thousands of euros have been shipped to Iceland for these idiot cell taxis, nevertheless it’s not one thing accessible through Google in English.
The 2020 Icelandic €300 million local weather bundle consists of the potential for funding hydrogen autos regardless of 20 years of utter failure, which is saying one thing. Like California and Germany, early efforts to be virtuous have led to a calcification of hydrogen paperwork, proponents and refusal to simply accept fixed failure as proof of the inappropriateness of hydrogen as a fleet transportation gasoline.
By my rely, the tiny island nation of Iceland, with its 360,000 folks, has the best per capita runs of the tragicomedy, three performs, two of which closed out within the 2000s, however with the taxi fleet revival in act 3 now.
Let’s depart the North Atlantic and head to the Pacific Northeast, to British Columbia. It obtained an honorable point out in a previous article, because the overwhelming majority of hydrogen refueling stations in Canada — 5 out of the overall of six — in addition to the headquarters of perennial hydrogen debutante Ballard Energy are inside the boundaries of the mountainous province. And with the existence of barely used refueling stations, there will need to have been native enactments of the tragicomedy.
Let’s go north from Vancouver, driving up the absurdly scenic Sea to Sky Freeway, previous the 300 meter plunge of Shannon Falls, via Squamish, dwelling of hypothermic kite surfers, and on to Whistler BC. Take care in driving, particularly on Fridays after work, as adrenaline junkies are driving at unique speeds so as to begin risking life and limb as quickly as attainable within the kilometer of vertical playground within the ski and mountain bike mecca.
That playground was on full show in 2010, when the Winter Olympics have been hosted in British Columbia. And with the boondoggle that’s the fashionable Olympics comes transportation boondoggles. In Paris subsequent summer time many individuals are pretending that electrical flying taxis will get their nice international debut on the occasion, one thing that’s each deeply unlikely to really happen, and if it happens, deeply unlikely to show into something greater than carnival rides. However in Whistler, the transportation boondoggle was hydrogen buses, 20 of them, powered by Ballard gasoline cells, and funded with C$94 million of taxpayer cash, nearly $5 million per bus.
The inexperienced hydrogen was being trucked — trucked! — from Quebec, roughly 4,500 kilometers away as a result of there wasn’t a ample provide of the stuff in BC. As a reminder, it takes about 14 tube trailers of hydrogen to exchange a tanker trailer of diesel, in order that was an terrible lot of 250 environment hydrogen vehicles powered by diesel driving forwards and backwards throughout the nation doing 9,000 kilometer spherical journeys. The state-of-the-art metal tube trailers of the time carried about 380 kilograms of hydrogen every, the vitality equal of 1,400 liters of diesel, though gasoline cells are a bit extra environment friendly than a diesel bus engine, so it’s extra just like the equal of two,000 liters. That’s sufficient for maybe 10,000 kilometers of bus driving.
Sure, each bus within the Whistler fleet required about 9,000 kilometers of diesel trucking distance for each 10,000 kilometers of bus journey. Ballard brags nonetheless that the 20 buses coated over one million kilometers of their first yr or so. That meant that about 100 hydrogen tube semi vehicles driving 900,000 kilometers forwards and backwards on the Trans Canada Freeway. The 4 years of the trial most likely required 4 million fully pointless kilometers of freeway diesel truck visitors between Quebec and BC.
Oh, and the gasoline cell buses didn’t like even the delicate Whistler winters, because the water vapor created by gasoline cells tended to freeze up inside them and produce them to a halt by the facet of snowy roads. Bear in mind, Whistler is a ski city and these buses have been deployed for the Winter Olympics, but they weren’t able to coping with even delicate winter situations. Amusingly, one of many tales the hydrogen refrain nonetheless tells is that the benefit of hydrogen buses over battery electrical is winter driving.
The buses have been, after all, deserted completely in 2014. Numerous politicians since, seduced into pondering that the hydrogen for vitality financial system was simply across the nook by Ballard lobbyists and holdover native refrain members, have proposed large new funding schemes for hydrogen. However, after all, all the transit organizations are going battery electrical as quick as they’ll, and shopping for biodiesel to bridge their legacy buses to retirement. No hydrogen fleets nonetheless on the roads of BC so far as I’m conscious.
And eventually, one final Canadian story earlier than I tuck this collection into mattress earlier than Christmas, this one from Quebec once more. One other correspondent supplied me with an article from le journal de quebec headlined “After $6 million spent: no extra authorities hydrogen vehicles“, at the very least in line with Chrome’s automated translation.
In 2018, the federal government of Quebec determined that changing into a inexperienced hydrogen energy participant with all of its extra, uncommitted hydroelectricity — one thing which evaporated this yr once they realized that they’d truly overcommitted their GW of capability, resulting in embarrassing headlines about Quebec refusing to supply electrical energy for inexperienced hydrogen vegetation — was an incredible thought. As a part of that initiative, they determined to create a hydrogen mild car take a look at middle. That’s what led to the only real hydrogen refueling station outdoors of the bizarre bubble of BC.
And it additionally led to the Quebec authorities leasing 50 Toyota Mirai vehicles for governmental use for the usual 4 yr time period. As a reminder, Toyota doesn’t promote Mirais, it solely leases them, and the one cause most non-public drivers take them up on that is because of Toyota offering US$15,000 in free hydrogen refueling, one thing which at California’s present hydrogen refueling prices offers about 2.5 years of free driving. One web wag identified that leasing a used Mirai for $10,000 or $15,000 was effectively price it, for those who occurred to largely drive across the restricted components of California with refueling stations that really labored.
The Quebec hydrogen refueling station, barely used, dusty and ignored by the drivers who pull into the Esso station it’s positioned with within the suburban wilds of Quebec Metropolis, value over $5 million for its single car at a time capability. Exterior of the governmental vehicles, which apparently governmental employees barely used, there have been solely 20 registered gasoline cell autos in all of Quebec in 2022. In the meantime, Quebec leads Canada in electrical autos, with 43% of latest autos being battery electrical and a couple of million registered electrical autos seemingly early in 2024. Now the 50 Mirais are again on Toyota’s palms, being refurbished for the following suckers.
The federal government didn’t make an announcement about this. They refused remark in truth. Native lecturers are moaning concerning the full lack of transparency and reporting. The federal government is claiming it should launch a full report in 2024, however I anticipate not.
In any case, Quebec is within the grips of hydrogen for vitality fever once more, hoping to spin up an industrial big to exchange Bombardier, which not solely offered off its total rail enterprise however all of its aviation enterprise apart from some govt jet upkeep work. It’s not like the opposite perennial company welfare recipient, SNC Lavalin, is selecting up the slack, as its revenues are 20% off its 2019 peak, and the small modular reactor venture on the Bruce Nuclear Plant in Ontario, whereas undoubtedly good for tens of hundreds of thousands of padded invoices, isn’t going to be paying many Quebecois salaries.
That the Quebec authorities simply deserted its flagship inexperienced hydrogen car fleet isn’t an incredible PR story for the province being a brand new vitality industrial hub. Naturally, the hydrogen refrain is totally silent on this newest debacle and thinks the tiny hydrogen vacationer prepare is each vastly greater than it was, and nonetheless working. Their capability to disregard inconvenient details is among the issues stopping rational choice making.
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