the USA but the high capital cost is still a barrier to widespread adoption. However late last year the EU Commission’s Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH-JU) published an encouraging study on hydrogen buses throughout Europe. The project was established to evaluate the feasibility of de-carbonising public transport by 95 per cent throughout Europe by 2050. The performance of hydrogen fuel cell buses was found to be broadly similar to their conventionally fuelled counterparts. The report also highlighted the economic argument in favour of fuel cell buses as the cost of hydrogen fuel compares favourably with conventional fuels. The report concluded that hydrogen fuel cell buses, and other zero-emissions vehicles, are crucial if the EU expects to meet its transport and greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. The FCH-JU has invited public authorities, transport operators, bus manufacturers, component providers and other interested organisations to partner with them in the next phase of the study, which aims to detail the roadmap towards the implementation of hydrogen fuel cell technology in urban transport in Europe. Europe’s leading hydrogen bus demonstration project CUTE and its successor HyFLEET: CUTE blazed a trail in proving fuel cell and hydrogen propulsion technologies. The trials were conducted in eight European cities including Amsterdam, London and Hamburg. In HyFLEET: CUTE, 33 fuel cell buses and 14 internal combustion engine buses operated in daily public service. In total the buses accumulated in excess of 2.5 million kilometres and carried more than 8.5 million passengers, proving the reliability of the new technology. The project also demonstrated the next generation fuel cell/battery hybrid bus which has reduced hydrogen consumption by half. Perhaps the most high profile hydrogen transport project in the UK, the Transport for London hydrogen bus fleet, in 2012 completed a second full year of operation and reached some important milestones. This project formed part of the FCH-JU successor project ‘CHIC’ or ‘Clean Hydrogen in Cities’ in which a further 26 buses produced using the knowledge and experience gained from the CUTE project are currently being demonstrated. A fleet of these buses have been transporting London’s passengers on the busy RV1 route between Covent Garden and Tower Gateway Station and are central to the city’s efforts in reducing CO2 emissions. The fleet is refuelled at Air Products’ Stratford fuelling station where well over 1,000 fuellings have enabled the buses to travel 100,000 miles around the capital. One full tank of hydrogen enables a bus to travel for up to 18 hours, and the buses emit no carbon emissions – only water vapour. A brand new hydrogen bus fleet was announced for Scotland recently. Backed
by funding from the Scottish Government, Aberdeen City Council is planning to order 10 hydrogen fuel cell buses, which they expect to be running from 2014. The project will also mean the installation of a new fuelling station in Aberdeen and an effort to generate renewable hydrogen from wind energy.
able to store hydrogen in their tanks at this higher pressure, allowing them to achieve a greater range of travel between refuelling. Across the Channel, the Hydrogen Infrastructure for Transport (HIT) project recently received the green light for the roll-out of a network hydrogen refuelling stations along a first 1000km corridor from Gothenburg to Rotterdam and to demonstrate state‑of‑the-art refuelling technology through the construction of three pilot stations in the Netherlands and Denmark.
Alternative Fuels
DEDICATED TO PROMOTING A CLEANER ENVIRONMENT – www.greenfleet.net
Daiml AG, Honer Hyunda da, Toyota i and confirm have all produceed plans to vehicle hydrogen s for by 2015 sale
AN OLYMPIC TEST London is increasingly becoming a hydrogen transport hub and a new project was delivered in the capital to coincide with the Olympics. The fleet of hydrogen fuel cell powered taxis provided by the HyTEC (Hydrogen Transport for European Cities) consortium travelled 2,500 miles around London during the Olympics fuelled by the capital’s second hydrogen fuelling station installed at Heathrow airport. The pioneering fleet of fuel cell electric London taxis, which were developed by the UK power technology company Intelligent Energy and The London Taxi Company, transported 132 visiting dignitaries and the VIP guests of the Greater London Authority during the Olympic and Paralympic period. This was the first phase of the HyTEC project, which will continue for the next three years and will also install a network of fuelling stations in Copenhagen, Denmark. LOOKING TO 2014/15 2013 is going to see major new projects as the hydrogen transport industry seeks to ready itself for the arrival of commercially available hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. With major car companies committed to having hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the forecourts of car dealerships by 2014/15, hydrogen infrastructure companies have a clear target to work towards. One of the main requirements is 700 bar fuelling stations, up from the original 350 bar pressure. The latest hydrogen fuelled vehicles are
GOING THE DISTANCE A strong selling point to use hydrogen as an energy carrier for long distance transport is that it is a perfect range extender for electric vehicles. The ambition of HIT is to kick-off an EU network of refuelling stations to facilitate clean and sustainable transport along the main transport axis in Europe, thereby turning these into Green corridors. While the impact of a functioning hydrogen economy on the environment would be hard to overstate, major economic benefits are also likely if the transition from fossil fuels is helped with fiscal incentives. A recent survey and analysis by the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (UKHFCA) and the Energy Generation and Supply Knowledge Transfer Network found that the sector has the potential to become a low carbon success story by delivering more than 2,200 new jobs in the UK, preserve approximately 145,000 jobs in automotive manufacturing and generate £1bn annual revenues by 2020. To help make this happen, the UKHFCA is calling on the government to introduce a feed-in tariff to support fuel cells across the transport, heat and power sectors. In transport, we envisage support in the form of a rebate paid per mile equivalent to the fuel duty paid per mile by a similar conventional vehicle. L Blameless buses: one tank of hydrogen allows a bus up to 18 hours’ travel with no carbon emissions
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