Leipzig’s 16 hydrogen refuse trucks were reportedly available for deployment only 45.6% of the time after two years in service.
Garbage collection is not a technology demonstration. Municipalities need trucks that leave the depot every working morning, finish predictable routes, operate compactors through hundreds of stops and come back ready to do it again. That is why refuse collection has become such a useful test of competing zero-emission drivetrains. Battery-electric … [continued]
The Netherlands cut its 2040 hydrogen forecast by more than half as electrification displaced hydrogen across power, heat, buildings and transport—but the remaining forecast still assumes substantial demand growth.
Three years is a long time in hydrogen strategy. The Netherlands’ 2023 National Energy System Plan projected roughly 460 petajoules of gaseous hydrogen demand in 2040. Its 2026 National Energy System Plan update cuts that central estimate to about 200 PJ, a reduction of roughly 57%. This is especially interesting … [continued]
The fashionable technology changes from blockchain to hydrogen to AI, but the commercialization tactic persists: attach a new narrative to an unresolved proposition before the complete system has proved its economics.
Panthalassa raised $140 million this year to build autonomous ocean platforms that would generate electricity from waves and use it directly for AI inference computing at sea. The proposition removes one genuine problem for wave energy: instead of transmitting electricity back to shore through subsea cables and grid connections, put … [continued]
Hydrogen passenger aviation only reaches commercial scale if three sequential gates all open: an operator-ready aircraft, a throughput-capable airport fuel network, and a fleet large enough for meaningful scheduled service.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority announced its latest Hydrogen Challenge in the same week as I published my updated assessment of hydrogen passenger aviation. The regulator is examining hydrogen-aircraft turnarounds at London City Airport, cryogenic hydrogen storage and airside supply, while its broader hydrogen aviation roadmap targets scaled operations for … [continued]
Aberdeen’s five-year-old hydrogen double-deckers are selling to First Bus for £30,000 each, just 5.4% of their £556,000 average original cost.
Aberdeen’s hydrogen double-deckers have finally produced a useful market price, and it is more revealing than another theoretical argument about fuel-cell efficiency, hydrogen costs or refuelling infrastructure. First Bus is set to buy 23 Wrightbus StreetDeck Hydroliners for £30,000 each. Aberdeen City Council originally spent about £13.9 million on the … [continued]
Electrolyzer stacks are manufactured, but hydrogen plants are built. Much of the apparent learning challenge—and most of the project cost—lives outside the stack factory.
Hydrogen cost forecasts often borrow one of the clean-energy transition’s most useful empirical tools: the experience curve. If a technology has historically fallen by a given percentage in cost every time cumulative deployment doubles, analysts can estimate how many doublings lie ahead and compound the learning rate into a future … [continued]
Hydrogen’s detour persisted because incumbent assets, skills and institutions had reasons to keep the molecule economy politically viable after the economics weakened.
In 2023, a senior executive responsible for decarbonizing a major transportation company asked me, with some exasperation, what drove the “madness on hydrogen.” Hydrogen proposals kept arriving for applications where the energy balance and economics looked dreadful. That conversation became What Drives This Madness On Hydrogen?, an attempt to explain … [continued]
Groups allege Los Angeles & LADWP failed to comply with key environmental law Los Angeles — Yesterday, environmental groups joined an ongoing lawsuit brought by Communities for a Better Environment and Los Angeles Waterkeeper over the City of Los Angeles’s failure to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in … [continued]
CUTRIC’s institutional conflict is now the core issue: transit agencies should verify independently, while members decide what their participation endorses.
CUTRIC has a credibility problem that extends well beyond its long enthusiasm for hydrogen buses. The underlying issue is whether an organization whose mission includes commercializing technologies should receive a presumption of neutrality when it advises transit agencies on investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After reviewing CUTRIC’s strategy, … [continued]
Hydrogen and electrification occupy surprisingly similar amounts of attention despite radically different levels of physical deployment.
Hydrogen occupies an unusually large share of the energy-transition information stream for the amount of physical deployment behind it. Fuel-cell trucks, buses, trains, ships, storage projects, demonstrations and records recur through corporate releases, government announcements, trade publications and mainstream reporting, creating the impression that hydrogen remains a substantial parallel pathway … [continued]
