EUROPE: Hydrogen trains now offer a viable lower cost alternative to electrification on lightly-used lines, according to Matthieu Guesné, founder and CEO of green hydrogen producer Lhyfe.
The company is aiming to become a major player in the market to supply green hydrogen for the transport and industrial sectors, made by electrolysis using energy from renewable sources.
Lhyfe installed a 30 tonne/year capacity hydrogen plant for DB Energie at Tübingen in Germany as part of the H2goesRail project to develop a complete production and refuelling system for regional trains. Renewable electricity from DB’s wind, solar and hydroelectric portfolio was used to produce hydrogen for trials using a fuel cell powered Siemens Mobility Mireo Plus H trainset.
‘We are big fans of electrification, but the cost of electric of electrification is around €2m per km’, Guesné told Railway Gazette International on May 20. In contrast, he said, a hydrogen refilling station now had ‘the cost of electrifying 1 km of railway’.
With hydrogen trains becoming less expensive to buy, Guesné felt there were routes where ‘it doesn’t make sense any more to do electrification, it makes sense to do hydrogen’. The balance would depend on route length, characteristics and traffic mix; he suggested that hydrogen would be suitable for lightly used regional lines but not for high speed trains.
