Analysis of the cost of hydrogen infrastructure for buses in London

The use of hydrogen (H2) as transport fuel is often said to suffer from the ‘chicken and egg’ problem: vehicles that depend on H2 cannot go on the roads due to the lack of an adequate infrastructure, and the almost non-existent fleet of H2 vehicles on the roads makes it economically unsound to build a H2 infrastructure. Although both hydrogen vehicles (fuel cell and internal combustion engine) and the related infrastructure have been (and are being) developed and some are commercially available, cost is seen as a major barrier. With todayʹs technologies, H2 only becomes competitive with petrol and diesel when produced at large quantities, suitable for supplying e.g. thousands of H2 buses. The question is, how might this point be reached, and are there least cost infrastructural pathways to reach it. This paper tries to address the latter question, using the early development of a H2 infrastructure for buses in London as a case study. The paper presents some of the analyses and results from a Ph.D. project (in progress) being undertaken at Imperial College London, funded by EPSRC (Grant GR/R50790/01). The results presented here illustrate that cost of hydrogen production and delivery vary mainly with levels of hydrogen demand and delivery distances, as well as other logistic criteria; least cost production–delivery pathways have been identified for various hydrogen demand scenarios and refuelling station set-ups. Another important conclusion is that the pattern of converting a group of refuelling stations to hydrogen (e.g. a group of refuelling stations for buses in London) has a significant effect on the unit cost of hydrogen.