Hydrogen strategy in Reims Mer: technology of the future or the wrong path? – Rams El Murr neighborhood

It’s an amazing project, a foray into the technological future that the region and the city dare: hydrogen buses to Waiblingen, along with hydrogen production and a hydrogen filling station! A pioneering contribution to the energy transition? This is how much we see. But there are also valid objections.

Hydrogen diagram: electrolyzer, gas station, buses

It takes electricity from renewable energies like solar and wind, uses it to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis in what’s called an electrolyzer, and then uses the hydrogen to drive buses through fuel cells. One talks about “green hydrogen” because the wind and the sun flow into the reservoir through a bend. It seems great.

There must be such a thing in Waiblingen, the project is currently the most important building block of the so-called “hydrogen strategy” in the Rems-Murr region. The trial process is scheduled to begin at the end of 2023.

For hydrogen production – that is, building and operating an electrolysis plant – the federal government provides a subsidy of 5.2 million euros, and wants the region and the city to share the costs of the remaining 11.7 million euros for ten years.

The purchase of hydrogen is also regulated: the district wants to use it to refuel 17 buses on the road in the public transport district of Waiblingen / Fellbach over ten years. The region will use a total of another 13.87 million euros for this purpose.

13.87 million euros – that sounds like a lot, but it takes into account when you think: the amount produced there corresponds to 6.3 million liters of diesel. You’d get that amount of fuel for €13.87 million if it were 2.20 per liter – but who seriously thinks that gasoline will still be so cheap in two, three, five or ten years?

However, since the 17 buses likely won’t use everything up, the rest of the hydrogen can be sold to individuals willing to fill up their trucks and cars.

Everything seems so charming so far. However, a recent meeting of the District Council’s Environment and Transport Committee revealed that concerns are also growing.

‘I don’t feel good about it’: Concerns about hydrogen

Dr. Wad Ronald Borkowski, D-Link: Compared to battery-powered electronic mobility, the hydrogen alternative is nothing but “Plan B technology, to put it mildly”. And if the 17 buses don’t even use all the hydrogen that the Waiblingen plant produces – will there be enough other customers for it? or “Shall we serve it then like sour beer? I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

The criticism that Borkovsky phrased somewhat timidly has been circulating in the spectacle of energy experts for a long time. A common argument: 60 percent of the energy used on the long journey is lost from power generation via solar panels or wind turbines to electrolysis and the filling nozzle — and ultimately the fuel cell can only convert a portion of the incoming hydrogen into a drive stream. The overall efficiency of the entire hydrogen chain is pathetic compared to battery-powered electronic mobility.

“With the green electricity required to power a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, at least four equivalent vehicles can be powered by batteries,” says Ulf Bossel, one of the country’s leading critics of the country’s hydrogen economy.

Hermann Scheer also had doubts about the hydrogen strategy

The late Solar Pope Wieblingen Hermann Scheer (SPD), an alternative Nobel laureate, had deep skepticism about hydrogen’s game-changing power in the fight against the climate crisis. He once wrote: “Any form of renewable energy that can be used directly and without detour via hydrogen is preferred.” That first “the primary energy of solar radiation or wind is converted into electricity” and then “the hydrogen is then produced using the secondary energy source of electricity must be done by electrically separating water into hydrogen and oxygen” – it was thought to be very expensive and very cumbersome.

It would be completely irrational for “tertiary energy carrier hydrogen” to be expensive and costly to be cooled “until it is liquefied” so that it can be transported cost-effectively and safely. After all, this problem will not arise in Waiblingen. Electrolyzer, gas station, bus: they are all very close to each other.

Hydrogen: Good for the Future – But Not Right for the Present?

Hydrogen is an excellent way to store renewable energies and is therefore important for the future: this is what expert Jan Bender from the Solar and Hydrogen Research Center in Baden-Württemberg said in a lecture in Schweikheim. This might sound like an unreserved appeal to the Waiblingen project – if Binder doesn’t follow his grace with an important but: producing green hydrogen makes sense if you have surplus electricity from renewable sources available for it. But there is still a huge lack of it. Thus: “First, we need photovoltaics. We do not have enough of it!”

Reinhard Moth, a tireless ZVW letter writer from Althütte, put it even more starkly: Hydrogen is the “champagne of the energy transition.” Free translation: Moth thinks burning green electricity to produce hydrogen is a waste as long as we don’t install enough wind turbines and solar modules.

So is the Waiblingen project wrong? Just a moment: if our society wants to develop further, it must already gain practical experience today with technologies whose time may not ripen until the day after tomorrow; In this regard, the hydrogen filling station is very attractive.

Hydrogen plans for Wiesel before the end

Meanwhile, another pillar of the region-wide “hydrogen strategy” has collapsed: the plan to use hydrogen trains on the Weslauftalbahn route probably won’t work (although the whole thing seemed like a done deal). A concept study by the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences clearly showed that battery-powered vehicles offer “significant cost advantages” over the hydrogen variant.