Hydrogen will ‘effectively replace fossil fuels’ as the UK invests in clean vehicles

The use of hydrogen for long-haul trucking has been supported by H2Accelerate through new research designed to evaluate the success of the fuel type in the UK. The paper sets out that larger companies like Amazon, Nestle and DB Schenker, have the potential to drive significant market demand for hydrogen trucks and the growth of the sector.  

In the paper, the H2Accelerate collaboration sets out the needs and expectations of trucking end users and logistics providers as these organisations look to decarbonise their operations. 

They also outline how hydrogen can enable end users to achieve their decarbonisation targets while maintaining operations, especially amidst mounting regulatory pressure.  

The central objective of the collaboration is to enable a commercially viable, pan-European hydrogen trucking system in the post-2030 period. 

As fleet operators and drivers are a crucial component of a successful rollout of hydrogen trucking, their needs and expectations ought to be well-understood and met as the system is deployed.

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While making up just five percent of vehicle miles, heavy goods vehicles accounted for around 16 percent of UK road transport tailpipe emissions in 2019.  

Richard Harding, senior vice president of portfolio and integration, bp said: “Our customers in hard-to-abate sectors, such as heavy-duty transport, are demanding low carbon alternative fuels. They need and want to decarbonise.

“Cutting HGV emissions requires new infrastructure, and by bringing together our technical expertise, understanding of the supply chain, and insights from our customers, I am confident that together we can do more to drive change at pace for our customers.”  

At a recent conference, Justin Laney, fleet manager at The John Lewis Partnership emphasised the importance of the £200m of government funding injected into a three-year zero emission road freight program.

He maintained that both Electric Road System (ERS) networks and hydrogen systems involve significant financial and logistical risk.