Hydrogen: the quiet revolution for Europe’s cities
Hydrogen is quietly revolutionising heavy urban mobility and energy storage across the continent. It presents a crucial path to decarbonization, highlights Luigi Crema, President of Hydrogen Europe Research. Yet, he calls for immediate action to secure this future: “We now have the technological leadership. Let’s defend it and not repeat the mistake of the battery market, which is already lost to China”.
It’s like a forest growing — quiet, steady, but unstoppable. We are talking of the hydrogen revolution, happening all over Europe without people even being aware of it. While the public conversation frequently centres on battery electric vehicles, hydrogen offers unique and complementary solutions for sectors like heavy urban mobility. Castilla y Leon Hydrogen Valley in Spain’s Castilla y León region, a large-scale project co-funded by the European Union’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership, is only one of the initiatives that have started to materialise all over the continent.
To unpack this complex yet promising future, we sat down with Luigi Crema, a leading voice in the field. As director of the Sustainable Energy Centre at Fondazione Bruno Kessler and president of Hydrogen Europe Research, an association representing over 160 universities and research centres in the hydrogen value chain, Crema has solid expertise in European hydrogen policy. We asked him to shed light on the current barriers facing its widespread adoption, and the strategic European efforts to accelerate the large-scale integration of hydrogen solutions, ensuring Europe maintains its technological leadership.
Hydrogen is frequently highlighted as crucial for decarbonisation in various sectors, including aviation and maritime, but what are the specific benefits for our urban environments beyond simple emission reduction?
First of all, an essential element to consider is the fact that throughout the energy transition, with the support of renewable sources, we have entered a path of deep electrification of final energy consumption across all sectors, including residential, industrial, and mobility. However, we know that renewables are variable and intermittent. The sun or the wind are not always available at the exact moment that I need to use this energy. One of the solutions is to convert electricity during times of excess production into a green, renewable molecule that can then be effectively stored and used when energy is needed but not available from solar or wind. One of these forms of conversion and storage is the production of renewable hydrogen through the electrolysis process, which means producing hydrogen from water using renewable electricity.
So, what are the benefits for urban mobility?
For hydrogen, the primary sectors of use have been identified as the so-called hard-to-abate sectors, meaning those difficult to decarbonise, specifically heavy industry and heavy mobility. Heavy mobility includes categories such as aeronautics or maritime, but also forms of heavy mobility related to urban areas or freight transport. Concerning urban mobility, the greater the daily mileage, the more advantageous the use of hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles becomes. This is because they offer more mileage per hydrogen refuelling compared to a battery charge for analogous battery-powered vehicles.
So, to recap, the first benefit is obviously decarbonisation. The second is that it is more advantageous compared to battery-electric vehicles.
It’s like a forest growing — quiet, steady, but unstoppable. We are talking of the hydrogen revolution, happening all over Europe without people even being aware of it. While the public conversation frequently centres on battery electric vehicles, hydrogen offers unique and complementary solutions for sectors like heavy urban mobility. Castilla y Leon Hydrogen Valley in Spain’s Castilla y León region, a large-scale project co-funded by the European Union’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership, is only one of the initiatives that have started to materialise all over the continent.
To unpack this complex yet promising future, we sat down with Luigi Crema, a leading voice in the field. As director of the Sustainable Energy Centre at Fondazione Bruno Kessler and president of Hydrogen Europe Research, an association representing over 160 universities and research centres in the hydrogen value chain, Crema has solid expertise in European hydrogen policy. We asked him to shed light on the current barriers facing its widespread adoption, and the strategic European efforts to accelerate the large-scale integration of hydrogen solutions, ensuring Europe maintains its technological leadership.
Hydrogen is frequently highlighted as crucial for decarbonisation in various sectors, including aviation and maritime, but what are the specific benefits for our urban environments beyond simple emission reduction?
First of all, an essential element to consider is the fact that throughout the energy transition, with the support of renewable sources, we have entered a path of deep electrification of final energy consumption across all sectors, including residential, industrial, and mobility. However, we know that renewables are variable and intermittent. The sun or the wind are not always available at the exact moment that I need to use this energy. One of the solutions is to convert electricity during times of excess production into a green, renewable molecule that can then be effectively stored and used when energy is needed but not available from solar or wind. One of these forms of conversion and storage is the production of renewable hydrogen through the electrolysis process, which means producing hydrogen from water using renewable electricity.
So, what are the benefits for urban mobility?
For hydrogen, the primary sectors of use have been identified as the so-called hard-to-abate sectors, meaning those difficult to decarbonise, specifically heavy industry and heavy mobility. Heavy mobility includes categories such as aeronautics or maritime, but also forms of heavy mobility related to urban areas or freight transport. Concerning urban mobility, the greater the daily mileage, the more advantageous the use of hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles becomes. This is because they offer more mileage per hydrogen refuelling compared to a battery charge for analogous battery-powered vehicles.
So, to recap, the first benefit is obviously decarbonisation. The second is that it is more advantageous compared to battery-electric vehicles.
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Hydrogen: the quiet revolution for Europe’s cities, source
