Green hydrogen is the answer to electric vehicle infrastructure shortfall - Tim Harper

Electric Vehicles (EV) have been championed as a means of mass transportation which will help cut CO2 emissions and propel the UK towards a net zero future, but the unfashionable truth is the infrastructure required to keep Britain plugged in and on the road is not up to the job.

Tim Harper, CEO of hydrogen refuelling specialist Element 2

In the UK there are currently only 25,000 public EV charging points in operation, only 10 per cent of which are in Scotland. Estimates of the numbers of charging points required by 2030 to service 31 million passenger vehicles on UK roads range from 400,000 to 2.3 million. In other words, for consumers to be able to make the shift to zero emission vehicles, 200-700 need to be opened every day until the end of the decade.

Outside Scotland’s central belt, where larger distances through rural areas need to be travelled, the problem is even more acute, and subsidies will be required to convince operators to install charging points in areas of low density populations.

We believe hydrogen, as an alternative environmentally friendly fuel, could be the answer to decarbonising transport and could be rolled out across the UK without Government subsidies or cost to the taxpayer.

While the EV charging infrastructure is still dependent on government support, private companies like Element 2 are rolling out hydrogen refuelling stations, which in many cases can be co-located on existing petrol forecourts. We will have a network of more than 800 by 2027 and 2,000 by 2030, and within a decade this network could serve every hydrogen powered vehicle in the country and remove 35 per cent of HGV emissions, at zero cost to the UK taxpayer.

In July, we announced plans to open our first hydrogen refuelling station in Scotland as part of a £2 million investment on a site in Bridge of Don, Aberdeen, and we are working to identify potential sites and to secure planning approvals for a further 250 pumps in Scotland over the next six years.

However, if the UK chooses to use blue hydrogen, the environmental gains in ditching petrol and diesel will be severely diminished. Critics argue that producing blue hydrogen (created from fossil fuels) while capturing emissions elsewhere, will prolong the extraction of fossil fuels by decades, and simply reward the energy companies that contributed to climate change with more government subsidies.

Element 2 has opted to exclusively utilise green hydrogen or hydrogen from sustainable sources and is confident that it can source sufficient supplies for the entire UK heavy transport sector. As the cost of hydrogen, made from renewable sources like wind, solar or even waste food, continues to plummet, cost parity with diesel based on a cost per mile will be achieved within the next two to three years.

Cost parity with diesel, combined with uncertainty over the future of diesel for haulage, will see an increasing number of HGVs and LGVs switched over to hydrogen. But unlike EVs, lack of refuelling infrastructure will not be a barrier, and Element 2 plans to be at the forefront of this energy transition revolution.

Tim Harper, CEO of hydrogen refuelling specialist Element 2