Wales Looks To Spur Hydrogen Fuel Transport Network
Date: 25-Feb-05
Country: UK
Author: Neil Chatterjee
South Wales has seven hydrogen producing facilities and a pipeline infrastructure, and plans to become a centre for alternative fuel technology companies.
"We already have some hydrogen powered vehicles and aim to eventually create a distribution network, with some local refuelling stations in the next five years," said Steve Patterson of the Welsh Development Agency.
"Longer-term we can turn Wales into a hotspot for clean energy production that can then be rolled out to the rest of the UK," he told Reuters.
The Welsh Development Agency is working with gas producers, vehicle manufacturers and universities in its "Hydrogen Valley" project, which aims to have depots fuelling company delivery vans, buses and taxis.
However, a wider distribution network able to support motorists may still take 20 years, Patterson said.
The European Union is trying to cut industrial and transport emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as part of its commitments to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The costs of producing, storing and distributing hydrogen are the main obstacles to a so-called hydrogen economy, together with the high manufacturing costs for fuel cell vehicles, which make electricity from hydrogen and emit only water vapour.
Fuel cells are touted as a green power source for the 21st century, though environmentalists say they are only as clean as the energy used to produce the hydrogen.
At the moment hydrogen producers in South Wales such as BOC
use energy-intensive steam reforming to make the gas.
"We're looking at zero-emission production for the future, by using surplus energy from wind farms or biomass," Patterson said, adding tidal power was a possible resource. "We can also use gasification of coal, as we have massive amounts of coal."
A German study released on Thursday said Europe could build a network of hydrogen filling stations for 3.5 billion euros over the next 15 years, less than previously thought.
Energy majors such as Shell and BP need fuel buyers to justify building a distribution network, but fuel cell vehicle costs remain well out of reach for the average driver.
