The cost of a hydrogen bus in the EU has come down from €1.8mn ($2mn) to €500,000 since 2008 thanks to research and development in associated technologies, according to Bart Biebuyck, executive director of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU).

The FCH JU is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and industry association Hydrogen Europe designed to accelerate the deployment of hydrogen technologies. It invests equal parts public and private money into technology research and pilot projects, providing €2bn in finance to 287 projects since its inception.

The FCH JU saw dramatic cost reductions following investments in seven hydrogen bus pilot projects. It is providing finance for 100 operational buses with another 260 to come online in the next two years.

“At €500,000 it is close to being commercially attractive to replace diesel buses,” Biebuyck said at a Cop26 side-event this week.

“It is close to being commercially attractive to replace diesel buses” Biebuyck, FCH JU

The FCH JU has also invested in a number of pilot electrolyser projects.

“We have moved in ten years from 150kW electrolysers to 100MW,” Biebuyck adds. “Once we reached 5MW scale we saw big companies coming in—steel refineries and fertiliser manufacturers willing to try this technology in their industrial complexes. We know that we need to go to the gigawatt-scale, and that is what we will do in the next programme.”

Hydrogen partnership

Earlier this year, the European Commission announced the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, a joint initiative with EU initiative the Hydrogen Alliance that will build on the work of the FCH JU to accelerate the development and deployment of a European value chain for clean hydrogen technologies.

“It will focus on producing, distributing and storing clean hydrogen, and on supplying sectors that are hard to decarbonise, such as heavy industries and heavy-duty transport applications,” says the Commission.

The partnership is one of ten that will receive a total of €10bn of Commission funding. The FCH JU will continue its work as part of the partnership.

The EU’s hydrogen strategy aims for at least 40GW of electrolyser capacity across Europe by 2030. Some 34GW has already been pledged, according to consultancy Aurora Energy Research.

The strategy also calls for the development of hydrogen valleys, also known as clusters, where supply can be closely linked to demand. These valleys can then be connected to build out a hydrogen network, according to Nienke Homan, regional minister for the province of Groningen in the Netherlands.

“We want to create several hydrogen valleys, connect them, and then things will really scale up to the level we need,” she said at the same Cop26 side-event.

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Author: Tom Young