Impartial Techno-Economics Beats Hydrogen Narratives

Assist CleanTechnica’s work via a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Bayreuth, a nice Bavarian metropolis of about 75,000 folks, has grow to be an unlikely image of studying within the hydrogen story. Two years in the past, its municipal utility, Stadtwerke Bayreuth, introduced a plan to decarbonize its bus fleet with hydrogen gasoline cell automobiles. It appeared like the longer term. The proposal included a 5 MW electrolyzer, a 17 MW photo voltaic park, and an built-in hydrogen refueling station. It promised clear native manufacturing and power sovereignty, and was supported by hundreds of thousands in federal and state funding. The primary hydrogen bus was to be ordered in 2025, with twenty-five in service by 2030. It seemed like imaginative and prescient. In 2025, the identical group appeared on the knowledge once more and quietly determined to purchase battery-electric buses as an alternative.

That reversal might sound minor, but it surely reveals a deep fact about fleet transitions. When a company runs a impartial techno-economic evaluation, hydrogen loses. Each time the complete system prices are laid out—electrical energy inputs, conversion losses, compression, fueling, upkeep, capital, and operation—the spreadsheet factors towards direct electrification. When politics, subsidies, or narratives lead the method, hydrogen nonetheless will get its second on stage. When engineering and finance get to run the present, the curtain drops early.

Bayreuth’s story is a neighborhood reflection of this sample. In 2023, the town was caught up within the optimism that swept Europe. Hydrogen was framed as the right resolution for fleets that wished to be inexperienced however feared the bounds of early batteries. The promise of inexperienced hydrogen from native photo voltaic made it much more enticing. Like many municipalities, Bayreuth noticed a chance to hyperlink jobs, infrastructure, and local weather objectives in a single mission. However behind the imaginative and prescient, the financial actuality was ready.

Hydrogen’s downside is straightforward physics wrapped in advanced logistics. It takes about three items of renewable electrical energy to ship one unit of movement on the wheels. Electrolysis, compression, storage, and reconversion all waste power. The tools is dear and desires fixed upkeep. The hydrogen itself is at all times priced increased than diesel as soon as all prices are accounted for. Battery-electric buses, then again, have stored enhancing yr after yr. Vary and reliability have grown whereas prices have fallen. Charging infrastructure may be shared throughout depots and fleets. When a metropolis places each methods into a complete value of possession mannequin, the traces by no means cross in hydrogen’s favor.

Even when Bayreuth had managed to provide completely inexperienced hydrogen from solar energy, the system wouldn’t have been zero-emission as soon as the leaks began. Hydrogen isn’t a greenhouse fuel by itself, however when it escapes, it modifications atmospheric chemistry in ways in which entice extra warmth. It lengthens methane’s lifetime and boosts ozone ranges, each of which add warming. The perfect present science places its oblique international warming potential someplace between 11 and 33 occasions that of CO₂, relying on the timeframe of impacts chosen. That’s not trivial. Each valve, compressor, and connection in a hydrogen system leaks a bit of, and people small percentages add up quick throughout manufacturing, storage, and refueling. I’ve stated earlier than that when you think about these leaks, the local weather math for hydrogen transport stops working. Even the greenest hydrogen isn’t actually inexperienced as soon as it’s out within the air.

We have now seen this sample in different components of Germany. Baden-Württemberg commissioned an in depth comparability of hydrogen, battery, and overhead-wire trains in 2022. It discovered hydrogen operations roughly 3 times as costly as battery or wired methods. A couple of hundred kilometers north, Decrease Saxony found the identical lesson by expertise. It deployed fourteen Alstom hydrogen trains with €93 million in funding. Inside a yr, officers admitted that ongoing prices had been too excessive and future orders could be electrical solely. As soon as once more, the spreadsheet gained. Now, solely 4 of the hydrogen trains are working, with diesel fashions filling in, one other acquainted sample given the fragility of gasoline cells.

Bayreuth’s reversal adopted a second, impartial techno-economic evaluation that reduce via earlier assumptions. The brand new evaluation confirmed that battery-electric buses already met the town’s vary and efficiency wants, and that hydrogen added value and complexity with out benefit. If the identical goal evaluation had been carried out in 2022 or 2023, it will doubtless have reached the identical conclusions. The information had at all times favored batteries; solely notion and timing had not caught up.

What makes Bayreuth stand out is that it paused earlier than shopping for something. Many cities proceed via the primary acts of what I’ve known as the Odyssey of the Hydrogen Fleet. They begin with lobbying and grants, purchase a couple of costly buses, wrestle to keep up them, and ultimately abandon the mission. Bayreuth practically adopted that script. It had the funding, the electrolyzer plan, and the early enthusiasm. However earlier than reaching the purpose of no return, the governmental funding was delayed, the utility’s engineers and accountants appeared on the knowledge once more and noticed the mismatch between promise and practicality. They stopped earlier than Act 3.

That restraint issues. As soon as hydrogen {hardware} is put in, sunk prices take over. Businesses hold spending to justify earlier spending. They rebrand pilots as studying workout routines and anticipate the economics to enhance. In actuality, the economics by no means do. Hydrogen stays a core ingredient for ammonia-based fertilizers and explosives, for hydrotreating biofuels, for the declining refining of crude oil and some different industrial feedstock use instances, they usually should be decarbonized. For native transport, electrons win each time. Bayreuth averted becoming a member of the lengthy checklist of cities that burned via public cash to rediscover that truth.

There’s nonetheless some threat that the story will resume. Town’s electrolyzer might go ahead for different municipal makes use of, which may tempt decision-makers to revisit hydrogen automobiles later. Subsidy packages are available cycles, and every new wave can deliver renewed political stress to take part. Bayreuth might want to keep grounded in the identical techno-economic self-discipline that saved it from deeper losses. The hot button is to maintain asking the identical query: when all the prices are counted, what delivers probably the most service per unit of unpolluted electrical energy?

Throughout Europe, the sample is repeating. Pau in France deserted its hydrogen buses for battery ones. Baden-Württemberg walked away from hydrogen trains. Decrease Saxony realized the identical lesson. In California, hydrogen bus packages hold going through excessive gasoline prices and station failures whereas battery fleets increase. In each case, the turning level comes when impartial evaluation replaces narrative optimism. As soon as the spreadsheet is allowed to talk, the reply is similar.

Bayreuth’s reversal is not only a neighborhood coverage story. It’s an instance of how establishments be taught. Clear transport choices will not be about ideology or hype, however about physics and economics. The best resolution emerges when these two are given equal weight. Hydrogen has a spot in a couple of industrial methods, however for highway and rail fleets, direct electrification is less complicated, cheaper, and already confirmed at scale. Bayreuth’s option to cease, recalculate, and pivot displays maturity, not failure.

If the town continues down its new path, it can construct a dependable, low-cost, battery-electric, really zero-emission fleet that works. If it succumbs to the subsequent spherical of hydrogen enthusiasm, it dangers changing into one other case research within the Odyssey. The lesson for different cities is evident. Run the numbers truthfully. Replace the fashions as expertise modifications. Comply with the proof, not the narrative. Bayreuth did, and in doing so, stepped off the stage earlier than the tragedy started.