As the commercial vehicle industry progresses toward electric vehicles and a zero-emission future, we see ourselves in what the North American Council for Freight Efficiency has coined “the messy middle.”
While battery-electric commercial vehicles have continued to gain momentum, this technology has a specific use case limiting these vehicles to shorter daily distances as well as city settings where stop-and-go traffic can help initiate regenerative braking to prolong time between charging the vehicle’s battery.
Hydrogen fuel technology has been touted as a more viable long-haul solution that can provide fleets a more sustainable and environmentally friendly option while allowing trucks to refuel more quickly—in minutes—and travel farther distances—some 300 to 500 miles before refueling is necessary—than their battery electric counterparts.
Alternative fuel vehicles are often touted as a zero-tailpipe emissions solution. However, it is imperative the industry take into account just where that energy comes from to create the fuel in the first place.
So, how viable is hydrogen as a commercial vehicle fueling option? Turns out, the answer is a little messy.
“Hydrogen can be produced many different ways, with the required energy coming from many sources,” explained Rick Mihelic, director of emerging technology studies for NACFE. “While hydrogen fuel cell trucks are zero emissions at the tailpipe, getting the hydrogen in the first place may not be emission-free.”
NACFE released a guidance report in December 2020 outlining the commercial vehicle industry’s current understanding and viability of hydrogen fuel cell technology adoption. The report highlights various methods for which hydrogen fuel is created—using a color-coding system to distinguish those methods for how the fuel is produced. Of particular interest are gray, blue, and green hydrogen.
Gray hydrogen is conceivably the worst offender. Gray hydrogen is created by extracting it from natural gas using steam. The byproduct, CO2, is released into the atmosphere. With blue hydrogen, that same method is used, but the CO2 is captured and safely stored or reused. Blue hydrogen is viewed as the stop-gap fuel before green hydrogen—the most environmentally friendly option—becomes a more cost-effective option.
A recently released peer-reviewed study in Energy Science & Engineering found “the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60% greater than burning diesel oil for heat.” This is mainly due to the methods for which the natural gas to create blue hydrogen is transported before processing (hint: it’s the same as gray hydrogen) – through already-established storage tanks and gas pipelines. This works well for reusing already-existing infrastructure; not so well for the certain leaks that inevitably happen with storage and transfer of natural gas.
“A lot of what could happen with hydrogen is really going to depend on how quickly, and how cheaply we’re able to build out the infrastructure, particularly the refueling infrastructure, as well as the infrastructure needed to produce the hydrogen itself,” said Jessie Lund, Senior Associate, Rocky Mountain Institute. “It will be very important that the hydrogen used to power these vehicles is produced using renewables as opposed to traditional fossil fuels, to ensure that we’re seeing the decarbonization benefits.”
As mentioned, green hydrogen is more environmentally friendly. It’s produced through electrolysis, using electricity from renewable energy sources. It’s also expensive to produce, and not widely available, though companies are making strides to ramp up production. Earlier this year, Plug Power announced plans to build a green hydrogen production plant in Pennsylvania, which will create 100% renewable energy by utilizing hydroelectric power. The plant is projected to produce approximately 15 metric-tons of liquid hydrogen per day.
“Turning over the grid to renewables like solar and wind from coal and natural gas will take decades, maybe many decades,” NACFE’s Executive Director Mike Roeth told FleetOwner. “We should get started now with electric vehicles and have parallel adoption curves for the vehicles and renewables on the grid. We see the same for hydrogen.”
That NACFE Guidance Report on hydrogen fuel cells shared the conclusion that hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology more closely aligns, and subsequently should be directly compared to, battery electric vehicles (versus their diesel counterparts).
Just like hydrogen, today battery electric vehicles can be recharged via the existing power grid. This, too, isn’t 100% “green.” According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fossil fuels generate more than 60% of the power in the U.S. Significant investment and continued adoption of renewable energy options such as wind, solar, and hydroelectricity must continue if sustainability is the ultimate goal for an organization. The same goes for hydrogen. Or, any other alternative fuel for that matter.
Ultimately, the development and implementation of any of these new technologies is not linear. It will take setbacks and shifts in what works and what doesn’t. Look at ethanol for passenger cars and light trucks; or natural gas for commercial vehicles a decade ago. While still certainly an exceptional choice for some fleet applications, it didn’t turn out to be as widely adopted as once thought.
This will most certainly be the case with other alternative fuel technology options. There will be no one solution. And while our industry navigates and tests what works, and what ultimately won’t – we’ll all go through this messy middle together.
