California launches America’s first hydrogen-powered passenger train

San Bernardino, a city in Southern California, has unveiled the first-ever hydrogen-powered passenger train in the United States, a major milestone in California’s quest to achieve its 2045 carbon neutrality goals.

The $20 million train, called Zemu for Zero-Emission Multiple Unit, uses a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell and battery system to power the lightweight vehicle, which can carry 108 passengers along a nine-mile line known as the Arrow Corridor. San Bernardino has a reputation for poor air quality, thanks to a high concentration of freeways, railroad yards and industrial facilities.

The city has recently failed the American Lung Association’s 2024 State of the Air Index, a test based on the number of days that ozone and particulate matter pollution exceeded safe levels. Zemu is likely to appeal to travelers not only because of its green credentials, but also because it will be quieter than conventional passenger trains.

.“All you hear are a few HVAC blowers and cooling fans“, said Kaden Killpack, a commercial project manager at Stadler US who oversees the San Bernardino County Transit Authority (SBCTA), as reported by The guard.

Hydrogen fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen molecules to generate electricity and water vapor as a byproduct. Zemu will become the first passenger train in North America to meet Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) standards when it enters service in 2025. Zemu has been years in the making, with SBCTA officials contracting Swiss rail manufacturer Stadler Inc to provide technology that will alleviate the area’s poor air quality and reduce strain on the county’s roads.

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“Once you take that vehicle and add hydrogen to it, you make it possible to have zero-emission technology on the same corridors that Union Pacific and NSF operate on.“, said Killpack.That’s what makes this really crazy and cool“.

Zemu will likely serve as a proof of concept that other states can adopt to green their transportation networks. But California is wasting no time in ramping up its hydrogen train system, with Caltrans, the state’s department of transportation, contracting Stadler to build longer versions of the hydrogen trains that will run between Merced and Sacramento in the Central Valley. Caltrans has already ordered 10 of the larger trains, with the option to buy 19 more under the terms of the $80 million contract.

High costs

As is often the case, high costs will likely be the biggest barrier to rapid adoption of hydrogen technology in U.S. transportation and other sectors. Last month, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reported that only 12% of hydrogen plants have customers with purchase agreementsMost of which are vague, non-binding agreements that can be quietly discarded if potential buyers back out. The big problem here is that many industries that could potentially run on hydrogen would require expensive retrofits to make it happen, a leap that most are unwilling to make. Indeed, it is prohibitively expensive to retrofit freight lines in the U.S.

“You have to sell at least hundreds (of trains) to get economies of scale and reduce costs,” said Lewis Fulton, the Energy Director of the Futures Program at UC Davis’ Institute for Transportation Studies.

Green hydrogen, made by electrolysis of water using renewable energy, costs almost four times as much as grey hydrogen, made from natural gas, or methane, using steam methane reforming, but without capturing the greenhouse gases that are released. It is natural that it is difficult to build hydrogen infrastructure when the demand may not come for years.

“No sane project developer will produce hydrogen without having a buyer, and no sane banker will lend money to a project developer without reasonable confidence that someone will buy the hydrogen.BNEF analyst Martin Tengler notes.

“It is no different than any other energy development at scale. Gas pipelines were not built without customers,” said Laura Luce, CEO of Hy Stor Energy. Laura’s company has obtained an exclusive letter of intent to supply hydrogen to an iron plant that Sweden’s SSAB SA plans to build in Mississippi.

The cost problem is quite pressing, even in renewables-obsessed Europe,If half of it blossoms, we are happy. If a quarter of it blossoms, we are happy.“Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ:PLUG) told BNEF, citing the company’s 4.5 gigawatts of engineering and design work currently underway for European projects to generate green hydrogen. According to Marsh, EU member states are still in the process of incorporating their hydrogen roadmaps into their own regulations, slowing private investment.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

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