Science and Technology Committee

Oral evidence: The role of Hydrogen in achieving net zero, HC1066

Wednesday 14 April 2021

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 14 April 2021.

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Greg Clark (Chair); Chris Clarkson; Katherine Fletcher; Mark Logan; Rebecca Long Bailey; Carol Monaghan; Graham Stringer; Zarah Sultana.

Paul Howell, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee, attended the Committee.

Questions 137 - 236

Witnesses

I: Gloria Esposito, Head of Sustainability, Zemo Partnership; and Dave Rowlands, Fleet Engineering Director, Wincanton.

II: Dr Helen McAllister, Strategy and Planning Director, Network Rail; and Mike Muldoon, Head of Business Development, UK and Ireland, Alstom.

III: Richard Clegg, Chief Executive, Lloyd’s Register Foundation; and Dr Morten Bo Christiansen, Vice President-Head of Decarbonisation, Maersk.

IV: Glenn Llewellyn, Vice President, Zero Emission Aircraft, Airbus; and Dr Brian Yutko, Chief Engineer for Sustainability and Future Mobility, Boeing.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Gloria Esposito and Dave Rowlands.

Chair: The Science and Technology Committee continues its inquiry into the role of hydrogen in achieving net zero, today looking in particular at the transport sector—specifically, road, rail, shipping and aviation. We are very pleased to welcome from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee Paul Howell MP.

I am very pleased to welcome our first panel of witnesses: Gloria Esposito, head of sustainability at the Zemo Partnership, which is an organisation that brings together Government, industry and NGOs in the purpose of accelerating the use of zero‑emission transport solutions; and Dave Rowlands, fleet engineering director, at Wincanton. Wincanton is a supply chain solutions company that operates in the haulage space from 200 sites in the UK, with 3,500 heavy goods vehicles across the United Kingdom. Thank you very much indeed to both witnesses. Let me start with my colleague Zarah Sultana, who has some introductory questions.

Q137       Zarah Sultana: My first question is to both panellists. I will go to Gloria first. What role do you see for hydrogen compared to alternative low-carbon technologies for different road vehicles?

Gloria Esposito: Thank you very much for your question. We need to look at two timeframes: from today to 2030 to 2035, and the long term. There are currently a low number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road. There are a few hundred in the car market. We are beginning to see them in the bus market. The battery electric vehicle market has progressed much more significantly than hydrogen fuel cell.

We see a potential role for hydrogen vehicles where battery electric vehicles and battery technology might find it more challenging—for example, where there are longer routes. There is a lot of interest in using hydrogen in heavy duty vehicles, particularly in long‑haul operations for those sectors that have high mileages and quite high power requirements. At the moment there are no hydrogen heavy goods vehicles on the market. That market is anticipated to begin to grow in the latter part of this decade.

Dave Rowlands: We see hydrogen as one of the fuels, but not necessarily a silver bullet. Clearly, we are developing electric vehicles at the moment. Electric vehicles are the predominant HGV‑oriented power source alternative to diesel and other alternative fuels.

I agree with Gloria that the likelihood is that hydrogen is going to be more predominant in the heavier end, probably above 27 tonnes, in the articulated longer-haul sector. This country is effectively a regional haul country, but on that longer haul and heavier haul, we need a greater power base, without detriment to the overall weight of the vehicle, to uphold that payload and its efficiency. It has a heavier-end orientation.

I also agree that there are no hydrogen vehicles available today, certainly fuel cell vehicles. We are not looking for hydrogen vehicles to be using an internal combustion engine—burning hydrogen. We are looking at fuel cell vehicles, and certainly it will be post 2030 before any serial production comes on board.

Q138       Zarah Sultana: You mentioned that hydrogen is not a silver bullet. What is a silver bullet, in your opinion?

Dave Rowlands: I think we may need a blend of fuels. There will be some transitionary fuelling, perhaps more use of biofuels, until we get to the panacea of having a mixture of electric and hydrogen. It is going to be a difficult journey. Certainly, there is going to be a lot of need for developing the hydrogen side of the technologies, given that battery electric is developing but the hydrogen side simply is not there. At the moment we are just looking for the suppliers of the vehicles in order to get demonstrations of them, or an understanding of the technology and the other aspects that they will bring—the fuelling needs and how we will operate in the field with these vehicles on the highway.

Q139       Zarah Sultana: Gloria, do you want to come in on that point?

Gloria Esposito: I agree that a variety of options need to be available for different types of applications, whether they be urban, regional or long haul. We have a transitionary period in which we will have opportunities for other low‑carbon solutions, in particular, for example, biomethane for long haul, but for city applications we can also see battery electric vehicles. There is a variety of solutions predicated on how the market and associated fuel and infrastructure are working. All three need to work together in this landscape.

Q140       Chair: I want to explore a bit the point about the mix of fuels. In the inquiry, the Committee has heard different views about the desirability of running different technologies together. The counter case is that you are just deferring a decision on which way you are going to go, and, in so doing—if you try to ride both horses—we need to decide whether we are going to have a viable hydrogen infrastructure or an electric infrastructure. What is your view on that, perhaps starting with Dave and then Gloria?

Dave Rowlands: I think we will need a blend. I do not see hydrogen as being predominant in the lighter end unless the technology radically changes. I think battery electric, provided we have the infrastructure for the electricity supply, is ideal for urban and inner-urban operations. I see battery being up to a weight limit of, say, 27 tonnes, as I mentioned, but certainly electric has a great advantage. It is clean and easy. It is understood and it is very safe, in safe hands.

We have been used to it. When I joined Wincanton 25 years ago, we had 2,500 electric vehicles. They were called milk floats. This is not new technology. It is just updated and improved technology. I see battery electric predominantly at the light end, certainly in vans, through to slightly heavier vehicles, but we need the energy content of hydrogen at the upper end, because we cannot afford to carry all the battery weight and technology on a heavier vehicle that will then diminish the payload. We need a balance between what we need from the fuels as opposed to necessarily backing more than one horse.

Q141       Chair: It is good to be reminded that battery electric vehicles for goods are by no means new. I should declare an interest as someone who learned to drive in a milk float many years ago.

Gloria Esposito: If we stick to heavy goods vehicles, we really need demonstration trials to understand how they will operate in real‑life circumstances, and how the infrastructure associated with that will work. We need to understand the efficiency and durability of these vehicles. We need to understand the cost and the energy efficiency of the system. One of the constraints with hydrogen is that it has a number of inefficiencies in its production that makes the whole what is known as well‑to‑wheel efficiency lower than battery electric.

There are also challenges with storing and transporting hydrogen, because of its physical nature, that need to be overcome, and need to be understood in more detail. Trucks, especially long haul, have vast volumes of fuel that they need to transport, and it is really important we start to understand the practical, technical, economical as well as the health and safety issues surrounding that transportation. These demonstration trials are important.

Q142       Chair: Am I right in reading an implication into both of your answers that battery electric vehicles would be optimal were it not for the fact that for heavy goods vehicles they are not practical? In other words, is that constraint in the ideal use of batteries the window for hydrogen rather than its advantage per se? 

Dave Rowlands: From what I am gleaning from the manufacturers, and obviously this is early days in the development of them, certainly batteries diminish the payload. Typically, a 17‑tonne vehicle today using diesel would have a 10‑tonne payload. A 17‑tonne battery electric vehicle has a 7‑tonne payload—the rest is battery. We have a payload constraint issue that, until battery technology improves—and it will improve—diminishes that payload. It also has to be charged more regularly and there are range issues. Certainly we will have to change the way that we do transport. We will need an infrastructure change for battery electric to even get it to the point where it might tip over into the 27‑tonne network, where we perhaps go to hydrogen. Certainly there are issues with battery technology, but it is easier to manage and better understood at the moment than hydrogen, which is outside of academia but certainly very much in R&D for fuel cell on heavy truck.

Q143       Chair: Gloria, do you have anything to add?

Gloria Esposito: I agree with that. We also need to take into account the charging for those batteries. With greater energy density and size, they will have higher charging demands. That will place pressure on the local electricity grid as well.

For long‑haul vehicles, hydrogen has capacity and space issues on a truck, and we have to ensure that that payload is not constrained. Once we have looked at storing large volumes on vehicles, we also need to consider how that is going to be managed so as not to impinge on the cargo load.

Q144       Graham Stringer: What about subsidy? How long would you need subsidy before hydrogen was competitive in its own right? Is that dependent on being able to use stored energy from intermittent sources?

Dave Rowlands: Given that we do not have a hydrogen vehicle at the minute even to trial, the learnings and discussions I am having suggest that even series production of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is around £500,000 a vehicle compared with a typical tractor unit at the minute being £90,000 a vehicle. There is a quantum leap in cost for each individual vehicle. That is in series production. I know that the economics will change, but we are not talking about a large fleet of vehicles. This is not a car network. This is a 45,000 market sell into the UK per annum, and half of those might be hydrogen oriented. It is nominally 20,000 vehicles, so it is not a huge marketplace to be able to get the economies of scale.

We certainly have to be given the opportunity for some pump‑priming. Early pioneers and early adopters need some funds to be able to make them viable, because they are simply not going to pay back in their lifetime. Hydrogen and battery vehicles are likely to last longer. Typically, in our business, vehicles are four to five years of age before we dispose of them. The average age is around two and a half years. We are a very young fleet, so can adopt very quickly. The problem with the more expensive technologies is that they are going to have to be written down over the longer term to get that value back. They will be breaking even very much at the back end of their life, which might be year seven, year eight or year 10 even in hydrogen vehicles, and battery electric vans are only now starting to come down to a price where they can break even at the very back end of their life of, say, five years.

It is very much a different geography now as we get these high‑tech higher‑cost vehicles, and most certainly the industry would need some funding to get us to the point where more people are using it.

Q145       Graham Stringer: Can you estimate how long the subsidy will be needed for and how much it will be in total? I realise that it will be a back‑of‑an‑envelope calculation.

Dave Rowlands: If you do the maths, it is a £500,000 vehicle that we have to buy, and on that premise there are a lot of operators out there looking to adopt it, but at the same time the infrastructure has to be there. If we are going to use hydrogen, we need the plant and equipment. It is not just the vehicle, it is the infrastructure. We have to go into this with our eyes open. I cannot see it being done in two years. There has to be a 10 to 15-year plan to get this to be the predominant heavy end of the fuel system.

Q146       Graham Stringer: How much is it going to cost the Treasury?

Dave Rowlands: You had better ask the Chancellor that. I deal with the steel end of the business, not necessarily the cost end. Somebody else better informed could answer that question, perhaps.

Q147       Graham Stringer: Gloria, would you like to try to answer the question?

Gloria Esposito: At the moment, hydrogen fuel cell trucks are more expensive. Hydrogen as a fuel is more expensive and the infrastructure is expensive. We need scalability in all those areas to bring the price down. That is going to take time.

It depends on the size of the operator as well. Very large operators will need that fuelling infrastructure at the depot and the smaller operators will need a network of refuelling stations across the country. These operators have very tight profit margins of two to three years, and they are going to need fast payback. It is going to take a long time for that to happen.

Until those economies of scale build, you are going to need those subsidies to make that price parity. The price of the fuel is very important to the cost margins of those fleet operators.

Q148       Graham Stringer: Is it going to be dependent on being able to utilise energy from intermittent sources stored in some way that is not obvious to us yet?

Gloria Esposito: I think that the key issue here is getting the production of green hydrogen or blue hydrogen over this time period. Over the next 15 years we need to have that scalability. Using it with intermittent energy storage is a slightly separate issue. The fact is that we need the supply chains to build up and we need to look at the infrastructure and how hydrogen will be transported, especially for the heavy duty goods vehicle market.

Graham Stringer: Dave, you were nodding.

Dave Rowlands: Diesel is just too good. It is just dirty. You can buy it on the street corner. It is available and safe. We have to have a similar network for hydrogen. In our fleet we buy 80 million litres of diesel a year, but half of that is bought through bunker stock on the roadside. Despite our own depot, we still need to buy fuel on the road. I know we are large and can perhaps invest in it, but 30% of our haulage is through third party subcontractors, and they are very important to us. The small hauliers have a major role to play. They will need to be picking up hydrogen on the road, not necessarily hydrogen stocks at their own depots. That infrastructure is very important for the national good.

Q149       Graham Stringer: Clearly, the Government’s objective is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced, but if you are going to use hydrogen fuel cells a lot of other, pretty noxious chemicals are involved. Do you do a full environmental impact assessment on the totality of the change to a hydrogen‑based fuel?

Dave Rowlands: Wincanton has sustainability at the forefront of our mind and our customers also push it, so that sustainable element to any business discussion is back on the agenda these days. We will be reliant on the authorities, the Governments and the conventions across the world for truck production to ensure that that well‑to‑wheel analysis is being done. We tend to concentrate on the tailpipe emissions, because that is the end that we work at, but certainly as an organisation and through Governments and through associations in transport we will be looking to ensure that hydrogen is the right solution. They always have some concerns about some areas of it, and certainly we as a business would prefer to use green hydrogen, albeit that we would want very blue hydrogen if we had to use blue, ensuring that carbon capture is at a level of the high 90s as opposed to any lower than that. Yes, we take it into consideration, but we are reliant on a lot of others to ensure that it is right at the point where we purchase it.

Q150       Graham Stringer: A final question from me. Is it realistic or is it science fiction to get over the problem of having to carry very heavy batteries the whole length of the journey—you could do it by recharging the batteries by either having overhead wires on motorways or wires by the side of motorways? Is that realistic or is it pie in the sky, rather than wire in the sky?

Dave Rowlands: I am sure Gloria will chip in, but Wincanton is involved in a catenary project for overhead wires—tram trucks, let us call it—for certain parts of motorways. As I said earlier, there is not going to be one silver bullet here. There could be opportunities across some of the straight haul on some of the motorways that are very urban to have some catenary, for instance. That is an option.

Charging on the road is a problem for heavy truck because it needs so much energy at one point over a short period. That infrastructure for heavy truck charge—150 kWh up to 300 kWh—is not on every street corner. That is where heavy haulage and pick-up on the road for battery‑operated vehicles is more problematic.

Gloria Esposito: A demonstration trial in Germany is looking at overhead catenary, and it can offer a very efficient way of charging, especially along the road system, but, as has been pointed out, the flexibility of the vehicle will obviously be limited and we need demonstrations to touch on that.

You mentioned life-cycle analysis and looking at environmental impacts. That is critically important in understanding not only the carbon impact but the other environmental impacts associated with a range of different technologies and fuels.

Q151       Carol Monaghan: It is interesting that both of you are talking about the shift towards new technologies. There has to be a certain reticence or a bit of insecurity about whether to make that jump to new technologies. What should the Government do to manage this uncertainty? How can they encourage companies to take that leap or encourage investors to put their money into it?

Gloria Esposito: As I mentioned earlier, demonstration trials are critically important. The Department for Transport is looking at this with regard to hydrogen and battery electric vehicles for heavy goods vehicles. That is critically important, as I said, in giving operators the confidence to make that decision. It is really important for them to understand the total cost of ownership, the durability and the fact that these vehicles can do the work that they require. I think having those demonstrations is a key point.

Q152       Carol Monaghan: Dave, do you have anything to add?

Dave Rowlands: We need a number of things. This is not an easy move from the very long-established fuel of diesel. We most certainly need leadership from the Government. We need infrastructure to be developed in parallel with the vehicles as they become available. We have been trying to get the gas network as an industry to be an infrastructure that we can use in various places. It has taken 25 years to get to where we are now. There are very few gas stations for methane, for instance.

We need pump-priming for fleet purchases. That is going to be so important, as I mentioned earlier. It must not disadvantage those early adopters, because there are some major investments here, with very little return. Transport is a commodity‑based business, so every pound goes straight to the consumer or it goes as a saving to somewhere else because we cannot compete. We are very commodity based. Certainly, the subcontractor hauliers, if they are reliant on haulage as their only income, are looking at 2% to 3% margins, and they just cannot afford to invest. We need the certainty of that investment.

We need flags from the Government to ensure that that certainty is there for 10 or 15 years for any green fuels investments, tax breaks or fuel duty reductions. Anything that we can do, we need to have a long‑term view of it, not just a typical five-year or 10-year aspect of what we are doing.

We need incentives for good eco behaviour. If we are using hydrogen, please allow us to use longer vehicles, heavier vehicles. Look at this as being an opportunity of a carrot to say, “If you use something that is ecologically good, you can have a greater benefit that brings other efficiencies, not just the use of the fuel.”

Finally, I would like the Government to invest in safety investigation. When we talk about hydrogen, from the discussions I am having with manufacturers, there is likely to be around 95 kg to 100 kg of hydrogen on board a vehicle, plus a battery of about 90 kWh to 100 kWh. There is a lot of energy on board that vehicle in a tank. I am not seeing a lot of research on the safety of that on the road. I would like the Government to be looking at doing some academic research, not just desk-bound but some testing of that. Typically, hydrogen is in a controlled environment at the minute. It is in manufacturing plants. It is handled by people where it is in their safe hands. When it is in the public domain, it is a very different product or element. Where you just have fuel stations on the roadside, hydrogen is an untapped knowledge base. We need to understand the safety aspects of using it on the road and accident issues that can occur on the road and leaks, and then build that into the growth of the fuel, so that the rules, regulation, administration and protocols are there before we put the vehicles into work.

Q153       Carol Monaghan: Dave, you talked about this idea of developing both the vehicles and the infrastructure in parallel. In some ways, we have a blueprint in the development of electric vehicles. Do you think that has been a good example of development in parallel where we have a few vehicles and a bit of infrastructure, and we have seen it develop, or have there been sticking points on that?

Dave Rowlands: One problem we have with the charging infrastructure is that there are so many people trying to pull electricity for their own needs, whether it is heating or other technologies. There is not enough power to certain points in cities and other places where we have distribution centres. In that respect, it is not necessarily a good model to go for. We just have to run very hard at it. The electric network is going to be under massive demand. I think that one of your witnesses the other day mentioned that we use 300 TWh of energy today. It could double when we start to have an electric environment for cars and vans and suchlike. We really need to run at that because we will not have enough energy to put into the vehicles if the infrastructure is not there, whether it is on the road or depot based. I think that the model is right, but we need to run harder at it.

Q154       Carol Monaghan: Would that be your recommendation when we are talking about the development of hydrogen—that we fire everything at it and get more serious? I think the difficulty is that, if we jump in with both feet and find that hydrogen is not—we have already mentioned the phrase—the silver bullet, is there the potential that we could invest a lot of money in something that is not going to deliver what we expect?

Dave Rowlands: That is always a risk, but you back the horse you want to back. I would urge that we have multiple fuelling opportunities, not only because we do not necessarily have the silver bullet in one but also because of resilience. I have a concern that the whole infrastructure for transport could be reliant on electricity supply. It would be prudent to have a hydrogen supply as a back-up, or indeed, to ensure that we have resilience. We need to look at the whole strategy of our fuelling in this country so that we pick more than one means of having car, van or truck move on the road, to supply the goods to the country.

Q155       Carol Monaghan: I think that is a really good point. A lot of the discussion, not necessarily in this Committee but generally, is about one versus the other, VHS versus Betamax. Your recommendation is not to back a single horse.

Chair: Is that assent, Dave?

Dave Rowlands: Yes.

Q156       Carol Monaghan: Could I have Gloria’s thoughts on what the Government should be doing to support the development?

Gloria Esposito: We need really robust evidence to understand how the deployment of hydrogen will materialise for heavy goods vehicles, especially under long‑haul operations. There are different ways of storing and transporting hydrogen, whether that is compressed or liquefied. At a future time, it could be injected into the gas grid.

We need to understand how this would all work, how we get scalability, what the costs are, what the energy requirements are, and, going back, what the health and safety implications are. We need to see whether we have the skill base to ramp up this roll-out of infrastructure.

All these areas need scrutiny to understand how they would materialise, and, over time, how that would be scalable, given the vast amounts of fuel that the long‑haul sector uses and its intense requirements in its duty cycles.

Chair: I am going to go to Paul Howell now. He wants to start with the declaration of a historical interest.

Q157       Paul Howell: For good order, I should say that the last permanent job that I had before coming to this place was as logistics director of a manufacturing company, and Wincanton was the supplier of our logistics at that time. Obviously, it is historical and it should not have any influence, other than the fact that it might inform the questions I am just about to ask.

I very much empathise with Dave about having a network of suppliers. Wincanton would deliver for us nationally, but it would use local suppliers to cover more local routes. We need not just the guys who can afford to have a bunker of fuel but a network and infrastructure of fuel.

That is the direction in which I would like to take the questioning. We have talked about the different pieces of infrastructure. I will come to you, Gloria, first, and back to Dave afterwards. It sounds to me as though the infrastructure we should be looking to put in place almost has to be strategically directed because there are certain areas of transport that it is almost inconceivable hydrogen will be able to supply in the heavy end and the long‑distance end. It is more like covering gaps where electricity cannot. How do you do that as a strategy in developing an infrastructure?

To roll that a stage further, particularly for the bigger companies, it is not just about this country, and trying to cope with the differences in moving around London versus Manchester versus going up to the far reaches of Scotland. There is a thing called Europe next to us, with different countries, with different strategies and all that sort of thing. I know we have done Brexit, but we are still trading with them, and there are still lots of vehicles that have to go across there. How do we need to align ourselves with European strategies as well as ensuring we do all the different pieces of a UK strategy? That was a bit wordy, Gloria, but would you like to have a stab at answering that?

Gloria Esposito: Interoperability is obviously critical, especially when you have long‑haul vehicles going over to the continent. From the manufacturers’ perspective, many of the manufacturers are, in fact, European and are working with fuel suppliers and infrastructure suppliers in that partnership. That partnership work is really important, but it is also essential that individual countries have their own strategy and own process of developing infrastructure. That is going to be challenging because you have to have everybody working together. Not only do you need the infrastructure, but, going back, you need a green supply of hydrogen at low cost to make it affordable for these operators—so, yes, that interoperability is critical.

Q158       Paul Howell: Is there anything you would like to add, Dave?

Dave Rowlands: I agree. As I said before, we need the harmonisation of standards across Europe, across the UK and across the globe. American and European standards clash at times. We have to have a global standard for this because this technology cannot be developed by one country alone. We most certainly need to be part of the development of it for the jobs in this country. I am very conscious that Wincanton as a UK-listed company is interested in jobs in this country. The development of those trucks at the minute is not in this country. We have one manufacturing plant and it assembles—it does not develop. I am conscious that we have to be aware of all the standards across the globe, but we also need to be doing something on our own turf to develop technologies and therefore employ people.

Paul Howell: I will leave it at that.

Chair: Thank you very much, Paul.

Q159       Chris Clarkson: Turning to infrastructure again, I quite liked Carol’s analogy of VHS versus Betamax, and I am old enough to get the reference. Could HGVs make use of the electric charging infrastructure that has already been built for cars? I am thinking in particular of some of the larger cities. I am an MP in Manchester, where we already have charging points all over the place. How feasible would that be?

Chair: Gloria, do you want to kick off with that? The connection was a bit distorted but I think we got the gist of it. Can the electric charging infrastructure be used for hydrogen?

Gloria Esposito: No. I think we will need a completely different type of arrangement because of the health and safety issues surrounding hydrogen. Long‑haul vehicles are going to need to store significant volumes of hydrogen. We already have a growing network of gas refuelling stations, both CNG and LNG for biomethane. Those stations could evolve into green hydrogen or low‑carbon hydrogen refuelling stations over time, but we have to anticipate that the size of the stations will need to increase, and there are obviously challenges around how to scale them up.

Dave Rowlands: Predicated on the basis that those charging points are able to charge electric trucks, it is problematic because they are too low a power supply. They might be 75 kWh, and in the heavier end we will need 150 kWh to 300 kWh of energy at the plug. It is not going to be on a street corner. The expansion of car charging would probably be prohibitive in most cases beyond a van. Car charging is not accommodating the space for the truck in any case. It is going to have to be a parallel network or, perhaps, a consideration for truck when those charging points are installed. Certainly, again, that infrastructure is so important for electric vehicles.

For cars filled with hydrogen, it is the ability to have energy at source. The hydrogen is likely to have to be compressed to get it into a truck, on the premise that that truck hydrogen is likely to be at a much higher pressure to get the energy content on board. There are huge engineering issues to consider just for the infrastructure, never mind the actual vehicle.

Q160       Chris Clarkson: If we are looking at a hydrogen‑based network, we have already discussed the fact that infrastructure will be developed alongside the technology. Would a small number of strategically placed hydrogen refuelling stations be sufficient for road freight needs or would we need a much more detailed infrastructure plan?

Dave Rowlands: We pick up about 40% of our fuel on the road, so we need more than 10 or 20 strategically placed sites. This needs to be a national network for every town and city, or even village, to have the certainty of refuelling. Whether that is electric at higher kilowatt-hours or hydrogen, there is going to be a need for it. Obviously, the main freight network is where the predominant draw will be for the heavier vehicles, so hydrogen needs to be on the freight network, but do not be surprised where the trucks go and where they will need fuel from.

Q161       Chris Clarkson: If we are going to use that network, how significant is the need for high‑purity hydrogen to the ability to use the gas network, because there, of course, we are talking about a mixture?

Q162       Dave Rowlands: In terms of hydrogen, we cannot have a mixture of gas, so it is a separate network. We cannot co‑mingle the different gases. The network pick-up point could be the same place. We could have hydrogen, gas and methane at the same place, and they are used to that technology and the safety aspects of it. It would be sensible and prudent to have multi gases at a refuelling point and potentially some electricity as well because we will need that for compression needs. The fuel court of the future will likely be larger and more important in that it has multiple numbers of fuels available to us.

Gloria Esposito: In the future we could see hydrogen being injected into the gas grid, but for hydrogen to be used in a hydrogen fuel cell it has to be at a purity of 99.9%. It is very high purity. That hydrogen would need to be purified at the refuelling station. That has an energy, a cost and a size implication for that refuelling station. We could end up in the future where we have a gas grid that has methane, biomethane and hydrogen. All of these bring about immense complexities in the supply of those different fuels. 

Q163       Chair: I will round up this fascinating session. We are very grateful for your evidence. You have been very clear that we would need a pretty comprehensive network. A dozen or two dozen refuelling stations is not going to be enough for Wincanton’s needs, and I dare say that would be true for other competitors. We heard at the beginning of your testimony the view that battery electric vehicles are likely to take the strain for the lighter vehicles. It is principally the weight and the range that constrains the size of the batteries that are required for heavier goods vehicles. That leads to a dilemma, does it not, because, if you are to build a substantial network infrastructure, the returns on network infrastructures are over many years, but battery technology may advance, both in weight and range, to shorten the period of relevance for that infrastructure? Whether it is, as Carol said, your investing in something that may turn out to be a white elephant, ultimately, or whether you are looking to commercial companies—as I imagine you would at least in part to finance such infrastructure—is there not an essential difficulty that very expensive and extensive infrastructure is needed for something that might be ephemeral in its use?

Dave Rowlands: That is an obvious concern. On that premise, we have to have certainty for the future that that investment will be made available. The electricity network is going to be invested in anyway. That is a given. You could say that battery electric is the safest bet. Battery technology will improve and get lighter for a given output. The electric network is the safe bet. However, we still have the problem of carrying that energy on board a truck on regional haulage and long haulage. Manufacturers are telling me—and we go with guidance from those who ought to know their products’ application—that hydrogen is the right fuel.

That is the information that we have available at the minute. The dilemma with hydrogen is that it is a completely new network. There is very little of it and there will be other demands on that hydrogen for other things, whether it is the gas grid or otherwise. I do not have all the answers. We are putting a lot of questions up. Certainty for the future would be very useful if someone said, “Yes, we are backing hydrogen for the next 50 years and we have a view that we might as well start developing it.” If someone says, “We are still sitting on our hands and we are not sure what we are going to do about hydrogen,” nobody will invest.

Gloria Esposito: From the OEMs’ perspective, there seems to be no preference at the moment between those two technologies. Manufacturers are looking at both options.

We need a paradigm shift in battery chemistry to improve the energy density and lower the weight and size of batteries. That might not happen for another 10 to 15 years. As Dave says, there are many unknowns. That is why having resilience and a variety of options may be needed, especially in the short to medium term.

Chair: That is great. Thank you very much indeed to both our witnesses, Gloria Esposito and Dave Rowlands, for giving us a very detailed insight into some of the challenges in the road vehicle use of hydrogen in the future. We are very grateful for that.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Dr McAllister and Mike Muldoon.

Chair: We are now going to welcome our second pair of witnesses to talk about the potential use of hydrogen in railways. I am pleased to welcome Dr Helen McAllister, strategy and planning director, Network Rail, and Mike Muldoon, head of business development, UK and Ireland, Alstom. Alstom is a rolling stock manufacturer, and a third of all the daily passenger rail journeys made currently in the UK are on Alstom trains. Welcome to both of you. Perhaps we can start with my colleague Chris Clarkson.

Q164       Chris Clarkson: My first question, to Dr McAllister, is about the role of hydrogen in rail. National Rail’s decarbonisation strategy concluded that under 5% of the network would be best served by hydrogen at the moment. To what extent could technological developments affect that?

Dr McAllister: Thank you for having me here today and thank you for your question.

We have done some further work on what would need to be true for that level of hydrogen requirement to change. We have come to the conclusion that it is unlikely to significantly change over the next 30 years or so. The constraints for hydrogen usage for rail are the quantity of hydrogen that would need to be stored to power a service, and the extent to which technology would need to evolve to power a long‑distance high‑speed train or a freight train would be such that it would make it uneconomic to use it.

It is not so much about technology improvements. It is about the volume of hydrogen. You can compress hydrogen and you can carry more of it— work is being done in that area—but it is unlikely to be to the level that would make it viable for something like a heavy freight train or a long-distance high-speed train.

The question about how much of the network hydrogen technology can support being zero carbon is more about how we specify what the outputs need to be for the network for zero carbon. If you need zero carbon overall for rail, freight needs to be zero carbon, long distance/high speed needs to be zero carbon, and hydrogen is not, as we see it at the moment, the answer to those questions. However, it is a really important part of the mix in getting to zero carbon for the network.

Q165       Chris Clarkson: It is part of a wider tapestry.

Dr McAllister: Yes.

Q166       Chris Clarkson: Mr Muldoon, how does Alstom see the international market for battery and hydrogen trains? Is there a huge demand for this technology? Are you looking actively at developing and researching this?

Mike Muldoon: Yes, absolutely, we are developing this. Alstom has been developing hydrogen trains for about eight or nine years. We put the world’s first trains into service in Germany in 2018. We have four orders for trains to be put into passenger service—two in Germany, one in Italy and one in France. We are certainly seeing a relevance to the technology, and a significance to it, which backs our decision to start developing it that time ago.

Picking up on Helen’s comments, we see it as part of the mix necessary to decarbonise the network. Previous speakers talked about a silver bullet. It is not a silver bullet. Rail has the benefit of electrification. It is a very well-known and well-demonstrated technology in our sector, and is a very great tool in the battle to decarbonise the network. We see hydrogen as having a role, and, potentially, a greater role than is currently envisaged.

As we naturally give the benefit of the doubt to future development of batteries, we should look to other technologies to develop over time as they are adopted more widely. As we go forward, we may see a shift in the exact proportion of the network that uses whichever technology. The important thing is that what Network Rail’s work has done already is highlight that in 2050 there will still be a necessity for hydrogen trains on the network if this is to be net zero. We need to focus on that and start progressing towards it.

Q167       Chris Clarkson: Is that consistent with the model we have seen developing in other countries such as Germany, for example, where they are pursuing this mix?

Mike Muldoon: Yes, absolutely right. The sector that hydrogen is developing most readily in at the moment is regional passenger trains—trains that are not running on high‑speed, high‑intensity routes. It is absolutely right that they do not suit that technology, and electrification should absolutely be deployed in those areas.

Where we see the growth is in regional operation and some mixed use, so using hydrogen to give you a significant extension of operation beyond the end of the electrification section. A train might be electric for most of its operational distance and use hydrogen to bridge the gap. Batteries are also used in that role, but we have the same constraints as the road sector—the weight and the volume of space required for batteries. The problem that Helen just described as applying for hydrogen is worse for batteries in many ways, because they are heavier per unit energy and they are bigger per unit energy.

Q168       Chair: Before I go to Rebecca Long Bailey, I have a couple of follow‑up questions, perhaps to Helen. Chris asked you about the assessment that about 5% of the networks could be served by hydrogen. That embodies a solution in a sense that electrification is the first best. I think that 5% covers areas where it is difficult to electrify. Is that the case?

Dr McAllister: It is not so much that electrification is best. Each individual technology is best in the area that it addresses. Hydrogen does not require lots of expensive infrastructure compared to electrification. It is a great technology from that perspective, as is battery. However, because of the quantities of fuel that you need, and the parts of the network that those trains run on that would need that, electrification is the best option for those specific areas. At the moment, electrification is the best option for freight. It is the best option for long distance high speed. It does not mean it is the best option for the network as a whole. It just happens that the areas of the network that hydrogen is the best option for is around 4% or 5%.

There is also the potential to use it as an interim technology in areas that would not be electrified until later on, more towards 2050, so you could realise carbon savings earlier by using hydrogen technology in the interim.

Q169       Chair: But you would not be converting electric lines to lines that hydrogen trains use. There is no sense of running hydrogen trains on electrified lines.

Dr McAllister: Currently, we are not looking at converting electric services into hydrogen services. If we had hydrogen trains, would they run potentially underneath the wires in some areas? I could not say yes or no at this point, but we are not talking about converting electric services to hydrogen services.

Q170       Chair: Understood. Mike Muldoon, you mentioned local and regional trains in Germany. Are they replacing diesel trains, or are they running in areas that have been running electric trains up to now?

Mike Muldoon: They are only replacing diesel trains. We are not seeing any interest from anybody to displace electric trains. Delivering energy to the train by wires is by far the most energy‑efficient means of doing so, and gives you great scope to have very powerful and fast trains. That is why they suit high speed and freight so well. No, we are not seeing any evidence of that at all. It is all about removing diesel from the network in countries just like ours, where there is a relatively high proportion of the network not electrified and a difficult economic case to justify doing it.

Q171       Chair: Thank you. That is very clear. You gave the example of the trains in Germany that you manufactured. Did you do that on your own accord, as it were, using your own resources, or was it subsidised by the German Government, or some other source of public subsidy?

Mike Muldoon: Yes, to all those things. We invested significantly as Alstom, but partners in regional and national authorities in Germany were involved as well. We are seeing in many nations a degree of what was described earlier as pump‑priming being deployed by Governments who have vested interests in the ability to move people around their countries. We recognise some of this as not just decarbonising rail but decarbonising travel. One thing we need to do is have a rail network that is demonstrably clean to attract the modal shift on to the railways that we would all like to see. We will then get collateral savings from the other modes of transport that are not being used. Every person who gets out of their car and uses a train makes a significant saving overall to carbon. There are lots of perspectives there that feed into the way authorities are supporting the activity.

Q172       Chair: Was that subsidy for the development of the technology, or is there an ongoing subsidy for the use of that hydrogen train?

Mike Muldoon: There was some contribution to the development, but, predominantly, what it comes down to is the fact that the cheapest option for rail is to continue using diesel. If the authorities adopt new decarbonised technology, inevitably they import extra costs, as we discussed earlier. Meeting those costs, you might argue, is a form of support to the process that those authorities are providing, but effectively it is couched as a long‑term operating model, and the trains are deployed for 25 or 30 years. The typical life design of a train is 35 years, so they are a long‑term commitment to a long‑term product.

Q173       Chair: Are you able to say what the contribution from public funds was to the development costs of that German project?

Mike Muldoon: I do not have specific numbers that I can give you.

Q174       Chair: Do you know what your own company’s R&D costs were for it?

Mike Muldoon: Broadly speaking, yes. They were significant. There are tens of millions of euros involved in the development of any new product. Businesses such as Alstom, and many other OEMs around the world, of course, are investing consistently in where they think the product portfolio needs to go, and that is what we are doing with hydrogen.

Q175       Chair: Finally from me on this, would you be investing in demonstrating the technology in the UK absent Government support—in other words, on a commercial basis—or would you not do it unless it were publicly subsidised?

Mike Muldoon: We have been making our own investment in the UK. We have been developing a form of product for the UK market, looking, in fact, at converting trains for hydrogen traction. Together with our partners in Eversholt Rail, we have invested in that programme.

Q176       Rebecca Long Bailey: Thank you to both of you for speaking to us today. First, Dr McAllister, you have already alluded to the volume of hydrogen available restricting deployment. In your view, what very generally is needed from Government to enable the initial deployment of hydrogen trains? When do these decisions need to be made to reach the decarbonisation targets?

Dr McAllister: There have been successful trials of hydrogen trains on the continent. In the UK, the industry has demonstrated prototypes and trial runs of hydrogen trains. We have kind of got the technology to work. Everything set out in the traction decarbonisation network strategy is predicated on rail requiring to be at, essentially, near-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and anything within that strategy is based around that output requirement. How many hydrogen trains we need to deploy, the extent of hydrogen on the UK network, the extent of further electrification and the extent of battery trains are all dependent on understanding what direction, and how quickly, we need to move towards net zero for rail. We are working closely with DFT on the transport decarbonisation plan. That will help set out what that strategy is for surface transport overall.

Answering the questions on how quickly, and when, and what we need, is very dependent on what the end point needs to be. If we need to be at zero carbon by 2050, the driver of the hydrogen requirement for the UK network is not as much the end‑state carbon reduction for 2050, because that is around 4% or 5% of the network, and you could start that later. We can realise carbon savings now by introducing those trains. We do not have to put wires up over huge swathes of the network to realise those carbon savings. It is a relatively low infrastructure requirement, but it will take a few years to bring about.

The next step is for UK rail to say now, “Let us run some of these services in anger. Let us see how we run an actual passenger rail service powered by hydrogen on the UK network.” Industry is there, investing and looking at prototypes, and ready to take that step. Our recommendation is that we start doing that sooner rather than later—that we start considering those decisions, as I know industry is having those discussions with Government now about how we take that next step. There is no significant infrastructure investment required compared to electrification. The infrastructure requirement is essentially electrolysis plants around depots, so it is relatively discrete. I think that demonstrating that we can run those services on the network is the next step.

Q177       Rebecca Long Bailey: Mr Muldoon, your company has previously said that it continued to invest in this technology without any external support and was waiting for Government approval to deploy it. You have alluded to that again in your responses today. What actions and support would you like to see from Government, and within what timeframe? For example, would you like to see similar levels of support to the German project, or the other asks that you have been making of Government?

Mike Muldoon: Just to reiterate, I think we are in a position now where we are ready to move to the implementation step of deploying fleets rather than demonstration steps or prototypes. That is the case in the UK market now, certainly on behalf of Alstom.

As Helen just said, this is about a long‑term perspective. The decision partly needs to be, “We commit to the plan.” That is “we” at a collective national level. Helen’s team has produced an incredibly detailed and viable strategy. Commitment to it allows businesses such as ours to commit to developing the technologies to meet it, and that would help with this process.

The commercial structuring of the railways in the UK is quite unique, compared to that in Europe at least. The process of procuring that operation, and how it relates to a rail operator, how it relates to the Department for Transport’s role in franchising, or whatever the future is going to be to replace franchising, is a little difficult to speculate on at the moment because that is the subject of the Williams review, which, as we know, has not yet reported on the rail sector.

We are a little unclear about the detailed decisions, but the fundamental decision needs to be to say, “Yes, we accept now that this strategy is what we need to achieve.” We also need to build in the review processes that the strategy itself recommends so that we can take stock at certain points. We need to progress.

One of the imperatives is not only choosing what we are going to do about replacing diesel. The problem we have is lots of the diesel trains on the network are approaching the end or have reached the end of their design life. They are very old. They predate emission control, so they emit quite a lot of unpleasant fumes. Most importantly, there is an imperative to replace them, practically speaking. There is a very limited market now or desirability to invest in diesel trains because people now know they do not have a long life in that they could not serve more than half of their design life. What we need now is commitment to this plan so that investors and businesses can react to it properly.

Q178       Rebecca Long Bailey: On the bigger industry picture—this is a question first to Dr McAllister—Network Rail has suggested that the combined nature of transport systems’ use of hydrogen fuels in more vehicles such as buses, for example, might make combined fuelling stations a viable possibility, which would lead to economies of scale. To what extent does the long‑term viability of hydrogen use for trains depend upon deployment within other sectors and upon shared infrastructure?

Dr McAllister: The way we have worked up the strategy so far is that it does not, really. We have based the requirements for hydrogen trains, essentially, on producing hydrogen very close to the point at which it is needed, primarily for the purpose of fuelling those trains. If industry is going to partner organisations that will set up electrolysis plants next to depots, then it is likely that there would be more hydrogen produced than is required by the trains themselves, that we could therefore be an anchor client for that set-up, and that hydrogen can then be used in other industries. At the moment in the strategy we have assumed all those costs in with rail, so we are not dependent.

If it can be combined with using multi-fuelling points with other forms of transport, or hydrogen that is used for other sectors, that will improve the business case. It is an upside, right-sided failure for us, but we have assumed stand-alone at the moment.

Q179       Rebecca Long Bailey: Similarly, Mr Muldoon, Alstom has said that hydrogen trains would be ideal for creating highly predictable long‑term demand that would help to develop commercial hydrogen production. How much would your company’s plans depend upon the bigger picture of hydrogen deployment in other sectors, and, again, the implementation of shared infrastructure?

Mike Muldoon: I would agree with Helen in many ways. We do not see ourselves necessarily as dependent, but we think there is huge merit in combined aggregated use of the production facilities. It allows sharing of costs across multiple modes. The bigger volume that can be produced, the better the price that we all pay to use the hydrogen.