While battery-electric cars are quickly gaining market share, said California Sen. Josh Newman, “they still don’t represent anything close to a one-size-fits-all solution.”
“Relying exclusively on battery-electric vehicles will not be enough to get us there,” Newman said, in remarks at the June 20 California Hydrogen Leadership Summit.
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is the close cousin to battery-electric power. It is notable for being more energy dense than battery technology, making hydrogen the more suitable zero-emission fuel source for heavy-duty vehicles like long-haul trucking as well as maritime, rail and aviation.
Policy mandates like the California Advanced Clean Fleets rule, which will require fleets of all sizes — operated by both public and private organizations — to be zero emission by 2045 are pushing zero-emission transportation technology. Major operations like the ports in Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif., are quickly transitioning to a future that does not include diesel-burning drayage trucks and other vehicles.
“There are no other ports in the world that are more environmentally forward thinking than the ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles,” said Michael J. Galvin, director of Waterfront and Commercial Real Estate at the Port of Los Angeles.
The Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES) — a public-private partnership made of energy companies like Chevron, ports and other partners in California — is taking the lead on applying for grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help develop a “hydrogen energy hub” in the state. The DOE has some $8 billion for the program, which will help to fund the development of up to 10 regional hydrogen energy hub projects across the country. The project is seen as essential to help build out the technology and infrastructure to advance hydrogen fuel transportation as a viable green transportation option.
“Hopefully, if done right, it’s really an accelerant in terms of adoption of hydrogen in the state,” said Michael Hoban, general manager for the hydrogen division at Chevron.
However, happening alongside this are other projects focused on port activity which would advance the battery-electric side of the clean transportation balance sheet. Forum Mobility is developing a large charging depot in the Bay Area designed to serve drayage trucks at the Port of Oakland. The Greenville Community Charging Depot in Livermore, meanwhile, will be capable of charging 96 trucks with 100 percent renewable energy.
Meanwhile, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has been involved with the Joint Electric Trucks Scaling Initiative (JETSI) in Southern California to deploy 100 drayage trucks, complete with charging infrastructure. The project includes partnerships with Daimler Truck North America and Volvo Trucks North America, and also includes the development of microgrids, DC fast chargers and more.
Even though truck-makers seem to be moving forward with battery-electric technology, and companies like Forum Mobility are building out charging, it remains an open question around which technology will win out in the end. The consensus seems to be that battery-electric can be a workable option for short-haul regional trucking but is not suitable for longer operations.
A truck traveling 500 to 600 miles a day, “BEV [battery-electric vehicle] is really challenging in that kind of environment,” said Eric Shapiro, director in the automotive practice at the consulting firm Strategy&, a division of PwC, speaking at the CoMotion Miami conference in May.
“The range you need, the weight and cost of the batteries you would need to cover that distance, it just doesn’t work,” he said. “In that kind of long-haul environment hydrogen still seems to be on the table. You also need a lot less infrastructure, because you would only need it at truck stops to refuel.”
It’s not just trucking that is eyeing hydrogen as the clean transportation source. The Sierra Northern Railway (SERA), which operates about 75 miles of track in Northern California and 30 miles in Southern California, is on course to receive about $19.5 million from the state to transition diesel-burning locomotives to hydrogen-powered engines. The project is set to be complete near the end of 2027, expanding SERA’s hydrogen-powered locomotive fleet to four, with the aim of eventually converting the entire SERA fleet to hydrogen-powered zero-emission switchers.
“The hydrogen economy is not the future. It is right now,” said Don Boyajian, director of government affairs and counsel at Plug Power, a maker of hydrogen fuel cell technology. “Industry is ready. The technology is ready. And it is all about scale, and achieving scale quickly so that we can hit those decarbonization goals.”
