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The Center for Houston’s Future and the University of Houston, with support from other key collaborators, conducted assessments to identify opportunities for expanding clean H2 value chains in Texas and to develop a vision and roadmap to enter and expand new markets for H2. The institutions looked beyond the considerable existing H2 production and use in the Houston Gulf Coast region, which is predominantly used for oil refining and petrochemical feedstock. The purpose of this article is to summarize the outcomes of that work.

When Microsoft first looked into hydrogen fuel cells to power its data centres, suppliers told them they hadn’t run them for very long. However, the technology giant soon proved that such technologies can in-fact run for multiple days.

That’s what David Fernandes, Business Strategist at Microsoft, told H2 View’s North American Virtual Hydrogen Summit today (Oct 19). On the anecdote, he continued, “We actually ran our I.T. load off hydrogen fuel cells for 48 straight hours. And we were able to swap our hydrogen supply while we were doing this.

“The other concept we proved out here is that you can pretty easily scale this technology.”

“We want to go zero emissions, but we want to do it in a way that allows us to continue to make our routes and schedules serve the community’s needs instead of our vehicle’s needs,” Gnadt said. “Hydrogen electric does that.”

The MTD consulted with the few others agencies that have adopted the hydrogen-electric buses. There’s one in Flint, Mich., and some model in Canton, Ohio. AC Transit of Oakland, Calif., has run hydrogen-fuel-cell buses since 2000.

The Hydrogen Heavy Duty Vehicle Industry Group – comprised of hydrogen industry leaders Air Liquide, Hyundai, Nel Hydrogen, Nikola Corporation, Shell and Toyota, has signed agreements with Tatsuno Corporation and Transfer Oil S.p.A. to industrialize globally-standard 70 MPa hydrogen heavy-duty vehicle high-flow (H70HF) fueling hardware components.

CP’s Hydrogen Locomotive Program aims to develop North America's first line-haul hydrogen-powered locomotive. The program involves retrofitting a line-haul locomotive with hydrogen fuel cells and battery technology to drive the locomotive's electric traction motors. 

H2 0EL
In the fall of 2021, the first hydrogen locomotive, "H2 0EL", which stands for Hydrogen - Zero Emissions Locomotive, will be prepped for its official painting and launch.

“It is important to support the development of low-carbon hydrogen if governments are going to meet their climate and energy ambitions,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director, who is launching the report today at the Hydrogen Energy Ministerial Meeting hosted by Japan. “Governments need to take rapid actions to lower the barriers that are holding low-carbon hydrogen back from faster growth, which will be important if the world is to have a chance of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.”

Preliminary results of testing that began earlier this summer show the household natural gas appliances are compatible with up to a 20% hydrogen blend. These initial findings are consistent with previous international research and lab testing. This effort provides key operational and safety experience, including testing for pipeline leaks, that will enable SoCalGas to implement larger scale hydrogen blending demonstrations.  SoCalGas continues to test the impacts of blending hydrogen with natural gas on pipelines and appliances.