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The miles are expected to only continue to rise, as 70% of all vehicles leaving Wrightbus’ Ballymena factory in 2022 will be zero-emission products, up from 30% in 2021.

The Wrightbus Streetdeck Hydroliner entered passenger service in January 2021, with buses in operation in London, Birmingham, Dublin, and Belfast, in addition to its Aberdeen fleet.

Today, Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton and European electrolyser manufacturers met in Brussels to discuss how to increase industry's capacity to produce electrolysers used to produce clean hydrogen. The Commissioner and 20 industry CEOs signed a Joint Declaration whereby industry committed to a tenfold increase of its electrolyser manufacturing capacities by 2025. This will enable the annual EU production of 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen by 2030, set as target in the March 2022 REPowerEU Communication. It will improve Europe's sustainable and secure energy supply and reduce EU's reliance on Russian gas.

But many aspects of the burgeoning green hydrogen market have yet to be established, including the benchmark currency and universal volume in which green hydrogen is traded internationally. According to the IRENA report, the currencies and pricing mechanisms established are likely to have considerable geopolitical effects.

The “H2goesRail” project is being funded as part of the National Innovation Program for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology (NOW GmbH) with €13.74 million by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV). The funding guideline is coordinated by NOW GmbH and implemented by project lead Jülich.

“In its coalition agreement, the federal government agreed to electrify 75% of the country’s rail network by 2030,” said Michael Theurer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the BMDV. “Here, alternative drives can help reduce emissions from diesel rail transport. This way, we’ll be able to operate virtually climate-neutral on rail routes where full electrification is not possible. The H2goesRail project will not only test the use of hydrogen for rail, but substantially advance the technology.”

To summarize, this paper  has shown, first, that hydrogen is certainly an acceptable, very clean fuel.  Second, it has shown that it can be used at low levels in existing fielded systems, and some low NOx gas turbines exist in the field today that can operate with H2 levels of up to 50% , cofired with natural gas.  Furthermore, systems have been developed to operate with pure hydrogen.  The key development challenge for the future is low NOx, fuel flexible systems, that can be readily operated with a range of fuel compositions, ranging from pure H2 to pure natural gas. Figure 3 below summarizes the hydrogen readiness, R&D needs, and NOx compliance of these various technologies.  All of these will enable the combustion technology of the future — low NOx, wide operability range, fuel flexible combustion systems capable of operating up to 100% hydrogen.

Loop Energy in Burnaby has had a big growth spurt, adding 60 workers to its Production Way facility in a year to push the employee total to 100.

Now it’s announced that it has been awarded $9.75 million over three years from the Government of Canada through Pacific Economic Development Canada’s (PacifiCan) Jobs and Growth Fund.

The TFCM2-F-60 is a second generation flat-type module that produces 60kW power and can be easily integrated into the roof of the bus, alongside the battery and hydrogen tanks. A major benefit of Toyota’s fuel cell technology is that the range of the all-electric bus can be extended in urban traffic to around 400km for the solo bus and up to 350km for the articulated version of the bus. The combination of the battery and the fuel cell as a range extender eliminates the need for intermediate charging on-the-go.