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December 16, 2022
By Leigh
Collins
Wiesbaden’s public transport company to
end H2 programme —
which had received more than €5m from EU and German authorities —
and stick to electric battery buses over long term
The €2.3m hydrogen filling station at ESWE Verkehr's
bus depot in Wiesbaden.Photo:
ESWE Verkehr
German city to retire
its one-year-old hydrogen fuel-cell buses
after €2.3m filling station breaks down
The German city of Wiesbaden is
to retire its ten hydrogen-powered fuel-cell buses — a year after
they were delivered — after its publicly owned transport company’s
€2.3m ($2.44m) filling station broke down.
According to regional newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine, the refuelling pump “is no longer in
operation due to a defect”.
Portuguese vehicle manufacturer Caetano delivered the first
fuel-cell bus to ESWE Verkehr in the third quarter of 2021, with the
other nine vehicles following by the end of the year.
“Fuel-cell technology using green hydrogen is a central component in
improving the quality of air and the quality of life in Wiesbaden,”
ESWE Verkehr still states on its website.
The vehicles were funded by €1.95m from the
EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership and €1.68m from the German
government, while more than €2m of funding for the filling station
came from the German states of Hesse (where Wiesbaden is located)
and neighbouring state Rhineland-Palatinate (due to it being a joint
project with the city of Mainz).
There are now question marks as to whether ESWE Verkehr will have to
repay the money it received.
Officially, the company’s management board has merely informed the
supervisory board, which is chaired by the city council’s head of
transport, about its intention to scrap its hydrogen programme.
And the official reasons for
the decision are not exactly clear, with the problems with the
green-hydrogen filling station not mentioned.
According to an ESWE press release unveiled on Wednesday, the
one-year-old buses are too small to meet demand — “buses with a
larger passenger capacity are needed” — and that having “two drive
technologies in our workshop infrastructure is already very
demanding”.
ESWE will therefore procure 36
new articulated diesel buses “for the years 2022 to 2024” — because
“there are currently no such buses with so-called alternative drives
on the market”.
But it also said that it has no intention of ever using hydrogen
buses again — without explaining why.
“With 120 battery-electric vehicles, ESWE Verkehr already operates
one of the largest zero-emission bus fleets in Germany. Only in
Hamburg is the electric bus fleet currently larger. However, the
backbone is currently formed by [our] 130 diesel articulated buses,”
said the company’s managing director, Jan Görnemann.
The company explained in the press release: “The realignment of the
mobility service provider's fleet strategy envisages removing a
further twelve-metre-long solo buses from the fleet: a total of 61
diesel vehicles and ten fuel-cell buses.
“In the long term, battery-electric articulated buses and some
double-articulated buses are to be procured in the second half of
this decade — provided that ESWE Verkehr then has an additional
depot area available.”
It added: “ESWE Verkehr has
already entered into a dialogue with all those involved in the
hydrogen project in order to discuss how to proceed and to plan the
next steps. The mobility service provider will report further
details on the progress in due course. Until then, however, all
partners are bound by their contractually agreed confidentiality
obligations.”
The news comes two weeks after politicians in the German city of
Duisburg — 225km away from Wiesbaden — voted to spend €91m on 100
hydrogen buses to replace its existing fleet of diesel vehicles by
2030, after being recommended to do so by a study that will remain
secret.
Earlier this year, the French city of Montpellier cancelled an order
for 51 hydrogen-powered buses after newly elected officials found
that electric buses would be six times to cheaper to run.
However, the city of Frankfurt, which is 40km from Wiesbaden, says
it is happy with the 13 hydrogen buses it has been testing since
October, and plans to put more than 120 fuel-cell buses on its roads
within ten years, reports
Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
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