Hydrogen Refueling Station Closures In A number of International locations Extra Painful Information For Hydrogen Proponents

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The previous 12 months has been a 12 months of artistic destruction in hydrogen for vitality efforts. That’s to say, destruction of artistic accounting and projections in enterprise circumstances. Inexperienced hydrogen provide proposals failed miserably to ignite monetary curiosity as they couldn’t discover offtakers for realistically costed hydrogen, with solely 0.2% of over 1,300 such offers by quantity reaching manufacturing.

And together with that artistic destruction comes the failure of hydrogen refueling stations. Not the kind of failure I assessed lately, the place scaling the low volumes of hydrogen allotted at 55 stations in California would have resulted in roughly 30% of capital expenditures spent on upkeep yearly as an alternative of the three% to 4% figures used for years in complete price of possession research. One commenter instructed that that they had confirmed me mistaken with linear regression when there may be precisely no room to use that exact approach with the accessible information, whereas concurrently asserting that I didn’t perceive statistics, which is par for the course for hydrogen-for-energy advocates within the 2020s.

No, that is stations being shuttered and being dismantled in a number of international locations as a result of they don’t make any financial sense. Let’s get at the very least a partial checklist collectively, one which hydrogen ambassadors will try and deny or clarify away, inflicting them spikes of ache behind their eyeballs and certain making them snap at random passersby, as I defined in a chunk articulating the cognitive dissonance so a lot of them are struggling. There actually is somebody with the job title of hydrogen ambassador, by the way in which, and they’re actually having bother wrapping their head round actuality.

That is triggered by the information as we speak that Shell is closing its final seven light-vehicle stations in California. Not less than for now, it’s working three heavy car refueling stations within the state, three of 4 in Los Angeles. It’s not clear how lengthy the heavy car stations shall be working given how failure susceptible heavy gasoline cell automobiles have confirmed to be, with 50% increased upkeep prices than diesel automobiles and double the prices of battery electrical, per my evaluation of California’s hydrogen bus fleet information.

There are a proposed 250 refueling stations to be in-built northern Europe by Jet H2 Power, an organization with a barely existent web site, a employees of 10 per LinkedIn, and varied mixtures of joint ventures with Phillips 66 and EWE. Ten stations have been signed up for a 12 months in the past. I can discover no proof of them shifting ahead, and need to assume that the 250 quantity will flip into zero as nicely. Who would finance refueling stations on this local weather?

The galvanized rubber bubble pores and skin of hydrogen-for-energy sorts shall be in denial about this, nevertheless it’s clear that the economics simply don’t work for mild automobiles in any respect. Gross sales of hydrogen gasoline cell mild automobiles have fallen off the very low cliff, extra of a slight curb, from their earlier gross sales highs. The variety of mild automobiles in operation is low, with hydrogen epicenter California having solely 12,000 registered mild automobiles. As my evaluation of refueling station volumes confirmed, the typical car was solely driving maybe 15 miles a day, a good distance underneath the 37 miles per day common for the USA.

This newest Shell closure is weighing on my thoughts a bit. After publishing my evaluation of refueling, an Oakland, California resident whose job and baby rearing require she drive lots reached out to me to share her state of deep stress. She had leased a Honda Readability, making an attempt to do the proper factor environmentally in a state which has been pushing a foul know-how for 20 years regardless of clear proof that it was unhealthy know-how. When she reached out, she had lower than 40 miles of vary left in her automotive and didn’t know inform her boss she couldn’t do her job. She was terrified to go to refueling stations proven as open as a result of they have been so poorly provided with hydrogen and so unreliable that by the point she obtained to them, they have been regularly closed.

As of February 2023, there have been apparently simply over 800 hydrogen refueling stations on the earth. The 231 on this checklist, assuming that there’s some redundancy with California stations that have been out of hydrogen and subsequently closed, are about one in 4 of the entire stations on the earth.

Think about being a gasoline automotive proprietor and realizing that there was one thing like a one in 4 probability that the only real fuel station inside an affordable drive of you’ll be completely closed or just out of fuel while you tried to make use of it. Think about being a fleet proprietor on this scenario.

Welcome to the world of Danish taxi startup Drivr, which had 100 Toyota Mirais in addition to about 60 hybrid electrical automobiles it was utilizing to drive paying passengers round. It was utterly unobvious to me why any fleet proprietor, even in 2021 when Drivr acquired the automobiles, would put themselves in that place, till I regarded and located that after all the EU had thrown some huge cash at it, one thing I’ve documented occurring in international locations all over the world. Clearly, Drivr is one other staging of The Odyssey of The Hydrogen Fleet, and now that it may’t get hydrogen, it can undoubtedly abandon the Mirais.

However equally to the girl in Oakland, these numbers disguise a number of stress. Drivr’s Danish founders are most likely pulling their hair out. Their complete web site is touting hydrogen and now they don’t have any hydrogen. Their drivers are most likely worse off as a result of there aren’t any automobiles for them to drive.

There are actual human and financial impacts of constant to push the overcooked noodle of hydrogen up the greased hill of transportation.

And to be clear, that is removed from over. This large, international, cautionary story on the sq. wheel of hydrogen for floor transportation has removed from run its course regardless that the info may be very clearly in. That the sunshine car market and lightweight car refueling station market has collapsed leaving heartache and financial ache behind does imply that many gamers and governments have given up on it for heavier street transportation.

San Mateo, California, simply dedicated to spend as much as $168 million of different folks’s cash on as much as 108 gasoline cell buses, one thing that they’re proudly proclaiming to be the largest buy of unhealthy buses on the earth. This regardless of the simply accessible historical past of exorbitant prices of hydrogen buses from different counties in California. There aren’t any language or distance boundaries in the way in which of getting the knowledge. In actual fact, the knowledge is offered on-line for anybody to take a look at. After I checked out hydrogen fleet upkeep statistics, it took me minutes to seek out California’s stories.

On that notice, the one station that closed in Germany in 2022 has a transparent story. Lower than a 12 months after paying for a small fleet of buses and a hydrogen refueling station, the station broke down so utterly that they deserted buses and the station solely. The transit company was in limbo on whether or not it must repay the thousands and thousands of governmental cash that it had obtained for the failed trial, and dedicated to increasing its electrical bus fleet. Yet one more staging of The Odyssey of the Hydrogen Fleet.

Whereas Shell is out of the sunshine car recreation, it and others which have closed small stations are nonetheless claiming to have an interest within the heavy car house. That’s comprehensible, as there have been a number of very unhealthy complete price of possession research utilizing baseless assumptions and heavy favoritism for hydrogen trucking to place their thumbs on the dimensions in each instructions. Regardless of that, it’s not possible to make hydrogen trucking complete price of possession come remotely close to battery electrical vehicles.

I’ve had a little bit of a string of TCO research previously few months. The Worldwide Council on Clear Transportation printed one in November 2023 that I assessed that was clearly deeply mistaken with essentially the most superficial of glances, discovering that hydrogen vehicles would have vitality for distance traveled prices solely a small bit increased than battery vehicles, regardless of each utilizing electrical energy at refueling stations. There have been a number of thumbs on that scale, one thing that they pulled again from with out actually admitting that they’d pulled again from, altering all their numbers and conclusions and saying that they’d added an appendix resulting from curiosity within the report.

A German working group report I assessed needed to assume pipelines for hydrogen have been working to each constructing and that hydrogen fuel utilities can be as prevalent as pure fuel utilities are as we speak to get hydrogen trucking prices down out of the stratosphere and nonetheless discovered that battery electrical vehicles have been cheaper.

This morning I checked out a 2021 research, lower than three years outdated, from the United State’s Argonne Nationwide Laboratory on hydrogen vs battery electrical automobiles. Similar type of issues. They have been assuming flat battery vitality densities by way of 2050 and rising hydrogen storage densities. They have been assuming hydrogen gasoline cell automobiles can be offered by the thousands and thousands to carry the price of gasoline cells down, ignoring the platinum and membrane prices which might be comparatively rigid. They have been assuming it was doable to get to US$5 per kilogram hydrogen delivered. They assumed battery electrical elements and gasoline cell elements have been equal worth as on the time of the research and would decline in lockstep, when battery electrical automobiles had already demonstrably proven that they have been going to dominate. They have been utilizing older US DOE wishful considering targets with no foundation in empirical actuality when US DOE arduous numbers have been accessible.

These sorts of issues are rife within the literature. Loads of it, as I’ve written, comes all the way down to believing the nonsense projections of large aviation and delivery development and so assuming biofuels couldn’t presumably scale. As such, hydrogen turns into the one various, after which they twist themselves into pretzels to attempt to justify how this may be remotely economically possible.

So, hydrogen for mild automobiles goes as has been utterly apparent since at the very least 2012 when the Tesla Mannequin S launched. It’s taken some time, however the complete market is collapsing. With now 4 mid-sized battery electrical supply vans accessible for underneath $100,000 with 400 km vary, that market is useless as nicely until governments throw a number of cash at a hydrogen fleet.

A bunch of individuals are holding out hope for hydrogen in Class 8 / N3 vehicles, the largest ones, however complete price of possession research, even with a number of thumbs on the dimensions, are discovering that they’re uneconomic as nicely in comparison with battery electrical. The identical is going on for trains, by the way in which.

Europe is in concept constructing hydrogen refueling stations each 200 kilometers alongside their TEN-T Core street community. I’ll imagine that once I see the stations being constructed, and I’ll imagine that there’s an enduring place for hydrogen in trucking after they’ve been working for ten years. The previous will fairly doubtless occur to a substantial extent at €3-5 million per station as a result of there may be a number of inertia behind hydrogen trucking regardless of clear causes to go full throttle to battery electrical.

In any case, Daimler retains spending cash within the house with a Board member posting about it and defending their decisions with no information simply phrases on LinkedIn and presumably elsewhere, and extra remarkably companies are literally giving Nikola cash for gasoline cell vehicles, normally based mostly on actually unhealthy data and assumptions. That’s not going to finish nicely for them.

However each certainly one of these failures has a human story or many human tales behind it. The deeply careworn mom in Oakland is barely the tip of the iceberg. There are proficient younger individuals who have warped their careers towards these areas who’re beginning to have premonitions of impending financial catastrophe. There are individuals who have grow to be accustomed to regular work fixing refueling stations.

The ache and stress it can trigger could be laid partially on the ft of people that didn’t change their minds when the info modified, however stayed the course after 25 years of failure. They’re in governments and analysis organizations all over the world. One hopes they’ll look within the mirror, rethink their previous decade of effort and pivot to extra productive ends. Or at the very least publish retractions or severe updates of their unhealthy stories making hydrogen for transportation appear viable.