10 reasons we doubt hydrogen is the future of road transport

The UK government has rather hitched its star to hydrogen as the magic fuel which will solve all its decarbonisation problems. However, is it really the future of road transport? Here's 10 strong reasons why the answer might be no.

1. There are so many applications hungry for hydrogen - aviation, maritime, domestic heating, manufacturing to name but a few. And for most there are fewer other options than there are for road transport. Government incentives for hydrogen production have all been centred on road transport to date - but this will change.
2. It's ineffecient for many applications. Hydrogen is a high energy fuel but it's volumetrically challenged. Diesel offers 10KWh per litre and hydrogen only 1.4KWh even at 700bar pressure. 
3. Electric batteries for vehicles have lots of limitations, including the huge problems caused by the scarcity and ecological disruption of raw materials, range, cost and disposal However, battery technology is coming on apace, the raw materials could be replaced with more benign substances and density is improving. In short BEV development has left hydrogen in the dust for a while now.
4. You need to pour a lot of power into electrolysis to create hydrogen - why not just pour that power straight into a truck battery?
5. The distances travelled in the UK do not justify the huge investment of hydrogen fuel cell trucks nearly as well as those on the Continent or the US... or just about anywhere that isn't 500 miles long.
6. It's super expensive to make and, while this will become cheaper in time, the chances are that renewable electricity will always be cheaper than hydrogen from renewable sources.
7. We have no infrastructure, and it's not as easy as pumping it thrugh the national grid gas network because you need  99% purity for road transport purposes. We'd need a national network - at least at some point - of public refuelling sites, pressurised bunkers, and tankers. Overall it's not that much more dangerous than petrol to transport, but potentially it is higher risk for an operator to store than diesel.
8. It's fair to say that for the moment we don't need green hydrogen to see whether or not it works. But once we start running serious numbers of vehicles on it we will need to be able to scale green hydrogen production to a national level. if we have to import it, not only do we lose energy security but we also lose carbon benefit.
9. Like CNG and methane, leaked liquid hydrogen is problematic. It isn't a 'proper' greenhouse gas, but it does have specific indirect effects upon our atmosphere - and unlike electricity, it is a finite resource.
10. The promise of mini hydrogen plants using polymer electrolysis in logistics yards almost certainly doesn't stack up - it is way too expensive to produce hydrogen at anything but very large scale.

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