Trains, buses and trucks: How 2023 could be pivotal for hydrogen technology in Canada | 24CA News
As the Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive strikes alongside the tracks in Calgary, one thing is clearly amiss.
It’s the standard dimension and look that you just’d count on, however what’s absent is the low rumbling noise of the diesel engine.
Instead, this locomotive is powered by hydrogen gas cell and battery know-how as a part of a trial by the railway to discover whether or not the low-emission automobiles are robust sufficient and dependable sufficient to probably at some point revolutionize operations on the firm.
Over the final a number of years, there was an elevated concentrate on the potential for hydrogen to decarbonize many industries and assist nations attain their local weather objectives, whereas revamping power programs alongside the way in which.
The subsequent 12 months shall be essential, consultants say, in understanding whether or not that imaginative and prescient may plausibly grow to be a actuality within the close to future or stay a part of the creativeness for many years to return.
There is pleasure within the Canadian business about what 2023 will carry as a number of demonstration tasks are set to happen, whereas development may even start on an enormous new hydrogen manufacturing facility.
Testing underway
For CP Rail, the hydrogen locomotive accomplished its first “revenue trip” a couple of months in the past with the expectation to have the trains working in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary by the top of 2023. The subsequent step shall be testing out the know-how by way of the Rocky Mountains.
“It’s a perfect test bed. If you can operate there: heavy haul, cold temperatures, the most challenging operational conditions I’ve ever experienced in my career. And if it works there, it will work everywhere,” CP’s chief government, Keith Creel, stated throughout a speech on the RailTendencies 2022 convention in November.
“If this proves its mettle and it shakes out through the very tough validation test we’ll give it, [it will] truly be transformational for this industry.”
Relying on hydrogen as a gas supply is not a brand new idea, however know-how is advancing to enhance efficiency, concurrently there may be an elevated concentrate on local weather change world wide.
This 12 months will mark the beginning of some different experiments as hydrogen-powered buses and semi-trucks hit the highway.
A pair of transit buses will transport passengers in Edmonton and close by Strathcona County as a part of a one-year pilot challenge.
New manufacturing plant
Meanwhile, a hydrogen fuelling station is below development in Edmonton to permit the Alberta Motor Transport Association to check out semi-trucks on the province’s highways. The group is trying to supply as much as 4 totally different truck fashions this 12 months for native corporations to check out.
“I think the next 12 months is largely a proof of concept,” stated David Layzell, an power programs architect with the Transition Accelerator — a non-profit group arrange to assist Canada attain its local weather objectives — and professor emeritus in organic sciences on the University of Calgary.
“We can actually make hydrogen cheaper than diesel fuel today,” he stated, though the problem is the a lot increased value of transporting hydrogen and setting up the fuelling station.
“We are only going to get those prices down by getting to scale,” Layzell stated.
Hydrogen has been round for a very long time, however there may be renewed enthusiasm for the sector as a approach to jump-start the transition to a world reliant on low-carbon power.
Hydrogen is an power service, and consultants say it may be used primarily for heating and as a gas for transportation.
The quantity of air pollution related to hydrogen relies on the way it’s made. For occasion, if photo voltaic or wind amenities — relatively than a coal energy plant — produce the electrical energy that’s used to create hydrogen, the emissions are comparatively low.
Construction has simply begun in northeast Edmonton on the largest hydrogen plant on the earth by Air Products Canada. The $1.6-billion facility will use pure fuel to supply hydrogen with the objective of sequestering 95 per cent of the emissions and retailer them underground.
“The challenge with hydrogen is a little bit of the chicken-or-the-egg challenge,” stated Kevin Krausert, chief government of Avatar Innovations Inc., a Calgary-based agency that helps develop power transition applied sciences.
“Who’s going to build a major hydrogen facility if there’s no demand for it, and who’s going to build a whole bunch of hydrogen trucks or trains if there’s no hydrogen to supply it? So you’ve got this sort of supply-demand challenge.”
Construction of the Air Products facility, he stated, begins to beat that downside.
‘Too little, too late’
There is momentum within the hydrogen sector in Canada, however some consultants warn that essentially the most essential query within the subsequent 12 months will not be a lot in regards to the know-how itself however how keen governments are to assist the business.
“That is relative to what’s going on to the south of us with the United States’ policy supports that are very strong and very attractive and could take all the capital [investment] that we might spend up here and divert it southward,” stated Ed Whittingham, an Alberta-based public coverage advisor.
The U.S. authorities’s Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] consists of important subsidies to not solely offset the price of setting up a hydrogen facility however to subsidize its operations, amongst different funding applications.
In some instances, Whittingham stated, as much as 75 per cent of the fee to supply low-carbon hydrogen could possibly be coated by the U.S. authorities.
“What really is going to determine whether hydrogen stays niche and stays small scale in Canada or whether it goes mainstream and Canada really becomes a serious competitor is our response to what the U.S. has done,” he stated.
“And it could be a case, frankly, of too little, too late.”
The federal authorities is proposing a clear hydrogen funding tax credit score to entice corporations to develop new clear hydrogen tasks. The tax credit score shall be price no less than 40 per cent for tasks that meet sure labour and low-emission necessities.
In its 2022 fall financial assertion, the federal authorities warned that the subsidies provided within the United States had been extra beneficiant and improve the problem to draw funding north of the border.
Ed Whittingham is a public coverage advisor and the previous government director of the Pembina Institute.
“Canada will need to do even more to secure our competitive advantage and continue creating opportunities for Canadian workers,” the report stated. “Without new measures to keep pace with the IRA, Canada risks being left behind.”
Ottawa is at the moment accepting suggestions on its proposed hydrogen tax credit score.
The $1.6-billion Air Products facility below growth in Edmonton is receiving $300 million from the federal authorities towards development and an extra $161.5 million from the Alberta authorities as soon as the plant is operational.
