Hydrogen Mobility Europe (H2ME) has called for incentives, both at a national and international level, to ensure the dispensed cost of low carbon hydrogen is competitive for vehicle operators to create a level playing field with other zero emission vehicles.
On 14 January, H2ME published a report, following the completion of its first phase, setting out key findings and learnings. The hydrogen mobility project, which is made up of almost 50 organisations, has overseen the deployment of 630 hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (EVs) in 10 countries and the installation of 37 hydrogen refuelling stations in 8 countries since its inception in 2016. This has resulted in 14.5mn km being driven and 147 tonnes of hydrogen being dispensed across 68,000 refuelling events.
This marks the largest European deployment for hydrogen mobility to date, according to H2ME, which added that its first phase has demonstrated the commercial potential to rollout fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and hydrogen refuelling stations for both large and small fleets.
As well as recommending national and international incentives, H2ME has called for national, regional and local policies that ensure continued development of the hydrogen mobility industry. It recommended incentives such as purchase grants and tax exemptions to unlock demand from vehicle operators, while bringing market confidence to suppliers, as well as financial support applied per unit (kg) of hydrogen sold. This would work in similar fashion to feed in tariffs which stimulated early renewables uptake, lowering the price of green hydrogen at the pump.
It cited a need for future hydrogen mobility strategies to focus more on high mileage and heavy duty applications to provide the anchor demand for new installations as being among the key learnings from phase one, providing a stronger business case to operators of hydrogen refuelling stations. In H2ME’s second phase of deployment, the focus will be on developing state of the art refuelling stations, increased options for producing green hydrogen, and targeting a wider range of vehicles, ranging from light duty to heavy duty ones.
