Replacing gasoline and diesel with hydrogen is one of the answers to reducing CO2 emissions. The goal of the EU-backed H2ME Project is to help develop this technology.
Today, there are only a few hundred vehicles that run on hydrogen in Europe. Denmark is leading the way. It is the first country in the world equipped with a nationwide network made up of ten hydrogen fueling stations.
“Instead of a battery you have what is called a fuel cell, where you have oxygen reacting with hydrogen, creating electricity and water. There is a chemical reaction: the water goes out the tail pipe and that is the only emission,” explains Tejs Laustsen Jensen, CEO of Hydrogen Denmark.
The goal is to boost the number of hydrogen fueling stations across Europe to fifty within two years, and to double the number of hydrogen-fueled cars on the road.
There are a number of advantages in using hydrogen over battery-electric vehicles according to their makers.
“It drives very smoothly, you don’t have any noise from the engine,” says Tejs Laustsen Jensen. “The benefits are that you can keep the pattern you are familiar with, go into a refueling station and fill up your tank in 3 to 5 minutes and then you are on the way again with a range of 400 to 600 kilometres.”
One of the challenges is to produce “clean” hydrogen from renewable sources. The technology already exists. In the city of Sheffield in northern England, this station is equipped with an electrolizer. The wind turbine provides the energy needed to produce on-site hydrogen using water electrolysis.