Hydrogen for heavy-duty vehicles?
Hydrogen is being proposed as a strategy to decarbonize several hard-to-abate sectors of the global economy, including heavy-duty road freight. New research by Andrew J. Moffat and Ahmed Abdulla, published in Environmental Science & Technology, compares the effect of converting this critical transportation sub-sector into either battery-electric trucking or hydrogen fuel-cell trucking, with a focus on the newfound interdependency between zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles and the electricity grid.
By developing a sector-coupling generation expansion planning model to achieve net-zero emissions in 2050, they demonstrate that when considering the electric grid impacts of zero-emission trucks, battery-electric trucks offer the cost optimal approach, with up to 47% savings compared to the hydrogen alternative.
In fact, current hydrogen price targets, including America’s “hydrogen shot” of achieving $1/kg by 2030, are too high to achieve decarbonization via hydrogen fuel-cell trucks; parity with batteries is only achieved when hydrogen prices for the consumer (in other words, at the pump) fall below $1/kg. Their research also shows that abatement costs for decarbonizing heavy-duty vehicles are within the scope of Canada’s former carbon pricing schemes, which were eliminated by the Carney government. Diesel fuel prices must rise by 20–50¢/L to promote decarbonization of heavy-duty trucking for both BETs and HFCTs, which was happening before Carney’s elevation to the post of prime minister.