HAMBURG - As the Copenhagen conference nears, every effort to reduce greenhouse gas counts. With that in mind, hydrogen-powered buses can be one route towards clean public transport, results presented at a conference on 17-18 November showed. “Hydrogen transport is no longer just some engineers’ dream but a working reality,” Anne Houtman, director Internal Market and Sustainability DG TREN, European Commission, told the conference.
The European Commission has co-funded the HyFLEET:CUTE Project 2006-2009, which successfully operated more than 40 hydrogen powered buses over four years in 10 cities on three continents.
A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its onboard fuel for motive power using one of two methods: combustion, or electrochemical conversion in a fuel-cell. In Germany, the Berlin trial was with combustion engines (H2ICE buses operated by MAN) and the Hamburg trial was with fuel cells (H2FC buses operated by Daimler) with the industry seemingly becoming more interested in the latter because fuel cell propulsion systems have higher efficiency, Heinrich Klingenberg, managing director of hySOLUTIONS GmbH, a public-private partnership with the objective of fostering hydrogen and fuel cell applications in Hamburg, told New Europe on 17 November.
Daimler last week unveiled the first of its new generation Mercedes-Benz Citaro FuelCELL-Hybrid transit buses. Thirty of these new buses will be going into service in 2010 with the first 10 going to Hamburg where previous-generation fuel cell buses have already been in service for several years. “The HyFLEET:CUTE project itself has really proven in all these cities that the technology is very close to market viability,” Klingenberg said.
In order to tackle the world problem of CO2, original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, would have to come out with some bigger numbers of buses. But for now it is important to not only do the research work but to do the day-to-day public transport trials to prove that the technology is available and can be operated properly, Klingenberg said.
According to information at the Hamburg conference from the transport industry, manufacturers and the hydrogen production, the technology will be viable between 2015 and 2020. “Most of the homework is done. They’re very close to the market - very close. The cost has to come down and a little more experience, but we are not at an experimental stage anymore - not at all. There is a period of 20-30 years of this technology and it’s a matter of political will,” Boris Jermer of HyCologne, told New Europe. “What we need is buses which are cheap enough.” A fuel cell bus currently has a price tag of €1.5-1.4 million. “Price depends on the volume. If you produce one bus with 20 engineers it costs you a fortune. But as soon as we enter the first volumes that means 100 buses per year, then the price goes down to 600,000 which is already okay. It’s a lot of money but it’s okay,” he said.
Hydrogen fuel does not occur naturally on earth and thus is not an energy source, but is an energy carrier just like electricity. “When it comes to the question of how clean is hydrogen as a fuel certainly we have to be aware that we need hydrogen from clean resources to have it 100 percent emission free,” Klingenberg said. He explained that in the northern regions they have started to use wind energy for the production of hydrogen which then can be stored and therefore be easily available for a longer time and can be used for example for powering buses or ships. “The refueling unit with the production of hydrogen we will set up here in the city of Hamburg is the biggest one in Europe,” he said. Moreover, it makes sense to produce hydrogen from renewables rather than dirty sources. Producing hydrogen from coal would still damage the environment, with the only advantage being that when burned it produces water and spares city residents from breathing harmful exhaust fumes.