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Jeremy Bass6 Mar 2013
NEWS

Hydrogen power viable by mid-2020s?

UK study rates hydrogen fuel cell power will move ahead of battery power in the medium term
A hydrogen power consortium in the UK predicts that hydrogen will reach mainstream status among automotive fuels by midway through next decade. 
In the first of a series of scheduled SWOT-analysis reports to help facilitate commercial rollout of a hydrogen vehicle fleet and supporting infrastructure, UKH2Mobility has predicted that it’s feasible for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to find commercial critical mass by 2025. The group projects a thirty-fold sales increase over a decade, from around 10,000 units a year in 2020 to 100,000 in 2025. With mass production bringing costs down, the report points to a potential for 1.6 million vehicles on UK roads and annual sales of around 300,000 units by 2030.
The consortium currently has 11 heavy-hitting participants including Daimler, Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, industrial gases giants BOC and Air Liquide, energy utilities, the European Fuel Cells & Hydrogen Joint Undertaking and several government departments.
The report is the first phase of a detailed business case and rollout strategy, with the group now underway on the follow-up.
Although hydrogen is difficult to store and handle, there’s a growing school of thought that these problems are probably easier to surmount than the range and charge-time shortcomings of battery electric vehicles. A fuel cell drivetrain with a range of 500km is well within reach, with a 5kg hydrogen tank taking no longer to fill than a conventional petrol tank. Hydrogen is also plentiful, can be made using renewable energy and emits nothing but water vapour through its exhaust system. 
The UKH2Mobility report pointed to a sizeable early-adopter base, with “up to 10 per cent of new car customers… receptive to fuel cell cars when they are first introduced”.
It also points to a relatively easy infrastructure rollout, with just 65 refuelling stations needed early on and time to grow the network to 330 sites by 2025 and 1150 across the UK by 2030 – figures it suggests are quite in line with demand growth alongside vehicle sales.
UKH2Mobility suggests the network will manage to cover its operating costs from early in the decade, with a “relatively modest” up-front injection of £62 million ($AUD95 million) before 2020. By the late 2020s, it says, it will be breaking even.
At this rate, the UK could see a drop in aggregate vehicle CO2 emissions in the order of three million tonnes by 2030. It adds that replacing diesel vehicles with FCEVs at this rate could also cut up to £200 million a year from the cost of vehicle emissions damage to air quality by 2050.
Pictured: Honda FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle

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Written byJeremy Bass
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