Final Report Summary - HIGH V.LO-CITY (Cities speeding up the integration of hydrogen buses in public fleets)
Executive Summary:
The High V.LO-City project ran from January 2012 until December 2019 and aimed to accelerate the integration of a new generation of FCH buses (14 FC buses were operated in Scotland (UK), Liguria (IT), Flanders (BE) and Groningen (NL)) in the public transport system and operate them in fleets and in the same time demonstrating the technical and operational quality. It contributed in showing their value in creating a clean and highly attractive public transport service (/system) and facilitated the modular shift that local transport policies were and still are envisioning. By effectively linking previous (CHIC) and future demonstration sites (3Emotion & JIVE), the project seeked to further broaden and consolidate a network of successful FCH bus operators that is able to widen the dissemination of FCH bus operations in Europe.
Since 2002 several EU supported fuel cell bus programmes have successfully demonstrated the technical feasibility of operating fuel cell buses and refuelling hydrogen in public transport operations. Bus manufacturers consider the fuel cell hybrid (FCH) electric bus as the most promising technology to substitute the diesel and or hybrid buses in the coming years, as FCH technology will contribute significantly to reduce local transport emissions and to simplify operations. In order to facilitate a smooth integration of FCH buses, specific requirements with regards to maintenance, environmental and financial sound operations of public transport fleets needed to be addressed, including:
• Increase energy efficiency of buses;
• Reduce the total cost of ownership;
• Increase the life time of the fuel cells;
• Reduce life cycle costs and more specifically the cost of hydrogen;
• Define concrete economic early markets;
These, a the time, latest generation (3rd) of FCH buses in the High V.LO-City project reaches efficiency levels, that went further than those tested in previous fuel cell bus projects. In addition, experiences from past projects point to the importance of addressing public transport needs for more flexibility and for modular hydrogen capacity build- up, that have not been implemented so far. Last but not least EU regulations, as the EU Directive on the promotion of clean and energy efficient road-transport vehicles (COM 2009/33) require public authorities to include life cycle costs including energy consumption and CO2 emissions into their procurement decisions.
During the projects’ lifetime, all 14 buses and 3 planned HRSs (and 1 additional HRS) were delivered and operated in the 4 European regions, operating and fuelling these hydrogen electric hybrid buses in different parts of Europe under deviant geographical-, climate- and operational conditions.
Important on the topic of the HRSs included in the project was the aim for a reduction of costs of the hydrogen supply in the local sites:
o Liguria: linking with renewable hydrogen sources
o Antwerp: using by-product hydrogen from industry
o Aberdeen: making use of an existing hydrogen production and distribution mechanisms and eventually Scotland’s extensive wind energy resources
o Groningen: by using H2 taken by a pipeline as a by-product from chlorine production
The project realised more than 1 Million kms driven throughout the project, consuming between 9 - 13 kgs/100km. Fuelling the buses between 10 - 12 mins at the projects’ HRSs with an average availability of 96,8%. These numbers combined mean > 1000T of CO2 emissions were saved by the project.
Beside these physical demonstrations, the project, with help of a vast communication- and dissemination plan as well as the creation of a knowledge portal/ centre of excellence, also enlarged the reach out to and the understanding of the local, national and international general public, policy makers and other public transport operators.
Project Context and Objectives:
Europe, the European Union (EU) and its Member States, are implementing more and more rules and regulations on climate change and air pollution, among them also ambitions for transport both in the private as well as in the public sector. Policy objectives are also increasingly ambitious, all to mitigate against climate change and air pollution. In the field of transport, the focus is ever more shifting from fossil fuels – on to transition fuels– towards zero-emission, all with the aim to reduce harmful emissions and advocating greener alternatives.
In August of 2019 the European Commission revised their previously published Clean Vehicle Directive, tightening up and set a minimum target for 24% of all public transport buses in each EU member state to be ‘clean’ by 2025, with this minimum quota increasing based on the country’s GDP. In the Netherlands, where one of the projects’ sites is located the ambitions became even higher (during the time the project had already started and demonstration was ongoing), where the Dutch Government aims to have all new buses Zero-Emissions by 2025 and all public Transport buses Zero-Emission by 2030!
Due to the fact that public transport operations differs between countries, regions and even cities, a spread of zero-emission solutions is sought to replace the current fleets of buses. Hydrogen is one of the sought after solutions in heavy duty transport and therefore enjoying increasing attention from politics, giving political support, but also PTOs looking at the potential of the vehicles with fuel cell electric drivetrains. They use hydrogen as a fuel and produce no harmful tailpipe emissions, with a potential to create a zero emissions well-to-wheel transport system. Within the FCH-JU also a study was conducted on these fuel cell bus transport systems, which was published in the “Fuel Cell Electric Bus – Potential for Sustainable Public Transport in Europe”. Beside FCB also BEV buses can be used to reach the abovementioned goals, although in full public transport operation hydrogen can offer some advantages like fast refuelling times and longer ranges, making hydrogen interesting longer-range vehicles such as buses (high demand inner-city lines and regional outer city lines). Combining these facts, as these are the one that diesel buses offer now, hydrogen buses offer the same performance and operational flexibility, without impacting the standard customer service or time-schedules in which the current fleets operate.
Prior to the HighVLOCity project, hydrogen was showcased in prototype buses and demonstration projects, that showed the general public and other stakeholders the technology was working [ CUTE and HyFleet Cute (>2001)]. These projects were followed by CHIC, where a first generation of commercial (although still prototypes) FCBs were demonstrated and the learnings and emerging conclusions triggered follow-up projects focused on further demonstration, technology improvements and larger scale bus fleets deployment, incorporating projects for their supporting HRSs.
In Figure 1, an evolution of the different bus projects is displayed in a timeline, including the CHIC, High V.Lo.City HyTransit and 3Emotion projects, followed by the large scale implementation of large fleets in the JIVE and H2Bus Europe initiatives, surpassing the 1 to 2 digit numbers from the HighVLOCity project and reaching fleet sizes of 300-600 buses.
Projects also have even been combined and operated buses in parallel within the same city. A good example for this is the City of Aberdeen in Scotland that operated a fleet of 10 hydrogen buses in HyTransit and HighVLOCity. 6 buses (operated at stagecoach) and 4 buses (operated at First) combined (at that time) in Europes largest FCB fleet ran in the same city, fuelling at the same station.
Figure 1: Source HyTransit final Report
HighVLOCity
The High V.LO-City project, through the use of, highly efficient, FCH buses and a comprehensive, modular maintenance and hydrogen infrastructure build-up, provided facilitated substitution of conventional buses in public transport fleets. Building on the arguments of the Public Transport (PT)Operators of the High V.LO-City demonstration sites, Liguria, Antwerp, Groningen and Aberdeen and of previous fuel cell bus demo sites, that led them to start substituting their conventional fleets with FCH buses, the High V.LO-City project further demonstrates the economic and technical viability of these buses and of intelligent infrastructure solutions, necessary for broad market introduction.
The project locations, with regards to past and future demonstration project cities, offered key stakeholders an important perspective for broader European-wide fuel cell and hydrogen business development and investment decisions, engaging with new industrial players to get involved in the advancing deployment of these technologies.
The project also included innovative solutions to current trends in the operations of public transport fleets that required great flexibility in refuelling and maintenance infrastructure. Modular build-up of refuelling infrastructure linked to low cost low carbon hydrogen sources as well as models for inter-modular fleet management, in combination with other modes of transport were tested as well.
Projects’ objectives
The overall objective of High V.LO-City was to facilitate rapid deployment of the last generation of FCH buses in public transport operations, by addressing key environmental and operational concerns, that transport authorities are facing today. Through the strategic locations of the project demo sites the project envisioned broad dissemination of actual FCH bus performance in normal bus operations to other first time users and potentially interested transport authorities in their geographical area.
The detailed objectives of the High V.LO-City project were to:
1. Implement a fleet of 14 H2 hybrid FC commercial public buses in 4 regions across Europe with significantly enhanced fuel economy and high levels of availability, and with reduced maintenance and external technical input requirements
2. Establish and enhance three hydrogen production and refuelling facilities, linked to economical and sustainable hydrogen production plants, reducing the life cycle costs of H2 provision and transport
3. Create a network of successful FCH bus operation sites, so called Clean Hydrogen Bus Centres of Excellence (CHBCE), linking High V.LO-City sites with similar fuel cell bus demonstrations in Europe, connecting regions form Italy, through Switzerland, Germany with Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, to facilitate the dissemination of clear and factual information on hydrogen bus operations to transport authorities and key decision makers.
4. Evaluate the entire life cycle costs of buses, from their productions up the final operation aspects in view of the requirements of the EU Directive on the promotion of clean and energy efficient road transport vehicles (COM2009/33).
5. Contribute to the commercialization of H2 Hybrid buses in Europe, supporting the transferability of results achieved. High V.LO-City will set up business cases and Regional Mobility Plans as a success case and success models to be re-used in other European regions.
6. Contribute to the standardisation of authorization protocols for hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, through the analysis of existing experiences and existing barriers of national and regional regulatory frameworks in Europe.
7. Facilitate EU objectives and policies by researching and demonstrating the environmental, human health, energy efficiency, social and economic benefits of hydrogen powered buses in public transport,
8. Pro-actively communicate project advantages to citizens, communities, decision-makers and decision-formers so as to increase awareness, promotion, deployment and broader adoption of hydrogen fuelled vehicles, in particular for public and collective clean transport.
Combining these objectives with a strong consortium of cross-Europe players, the HighVLOCity had a real versatile and experienced group of partners, that worked together to reach the set ambitions and objectives. Above, the figure displays the consortium partners split over the different disciplines to successfully execute the project. Below, the map displays the partners in the different regions across Europe working together in the HighVLOCity-project. The partnership included partners from Scotland, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Denmark.
Project Results:
See attached final report incl. figures, tables and photographs of the full length of project for the complete overview of the abovementioned
Potential Impact:
See attached final report incl. figures, tables and photographs of the full length of project for the complete overview of the abovementioned
List of Websites:
www.highvlocity.eu
The High V.LO-City project ran from January 2012 until December 2019 and aimed to accelerate the integration of a new generation of FCH buses (14 FC buses were operated in Scotland (UK), Liguria (IT), Flanders (BE) and Groningen (NL)) in the public transport system and operate them in fleets and in the same time demonstrating the technical and operational quality. It contributed in showing their value in creating a clean and highly attractive public transport service (/system) and facilitated the modular shift that local transport policies were and still are envisioning. By effectively linking previous (CHIC) and future demonstration sites (3Emotion & JIVE), the project seeked to further broaden and consolidate a network of successful FCH bus operators that is able to widen the dissemination of FCH bus operations in Europe.
Since 2002 several EU supported fuel cell bus programmes have successfully demonstrated the technical feasibility of operating fuel cell buses and refuelling hydrogen in public transport operations. Bus manufacturers consider the fuel cell hybrid (FCH) electric bus as the most promising technology to substitute the diesel and or hybrid buses in the coming years, as FCH technology will contribute significantly to reduce local transport emissions and to simplify operations. In order to facilitate a smooth integration of FCH buses, specific requirements with regards to maintenance, environmental and financial sound operations of public transport fleets needed to be addressed, including:
• Increase energy efficiency of buses;
• Reduce the total cost of ownership;
• Increase the life time of the fuel cells;
• Reduce life cycle costs and more specifically the cost of hydrogen;
• Define concrete economic early markets;
These, a the time, latest generation (3rd) of FCH buses in the High V.LO-City project reaches efficiency levels, that went further than those tested in previous fuel cell bus projects. In addition, experiences from past projects point to the importance of addressing public transport needs for more flexibility and for modular hydrogen capacity build- up, that have not been implemented so far. Last but not least EU regulations, as the EU Directive on the promotion of clean and energy efficient road-transport vehicles (COM 2009/33) require public authorities to include life cycle costs including energy consumption and CO2 emissions into their procurement decisions.
During the projects’ lifetime, all 14 buses and 3 planned HRSs (and 1 additional HRS) were delivered and operated in the 4 European regions, operating and fuelling these hydrogen electric hybrid buses in different parts of Europe under deviant geographical-, climate- and operational conditions.
Important on the topic of the HRSs included in the project was the aim for a reduction of costs of the hydrogen supply in the local sites:
o Liguria: linking with renewable hydrogen sources
o Antwerp: using by-product hydrogen from industry
o Aberdeen: making use of an existing hydrogen production and distribution mechanisms and eventually Scotland’s extensive wind energy resources
o Groningen: by using H2 taken by a pipeline as a by-product from chlorine production
The project realised more than 1 Million kms driven throughout the project, consuming between 9 - 13 kgs/100km. Fuelling the buses between 10 - 12 mins at the projects’ HRSs with an average availability of 96,8%. These numbers combined mean > 1000T of CO2 emissions were saved by the project.
Beside these physical demonstrations, the project, with help of a vast communication- and dissemination plan as well as the creation of a knowledge portal/ centre of excellence, also enlarged the reach out to and the understanding of the local, national and international general public, policy makers and other public transport operators.
Project Context and Objectives:
Europe, the European Union (EU) and its Member States, are implementing more and more rules and regulations on climate change and air pollution, among them also ambitions for transport both in the private as well as in the public sector. Policy objectives are also increasingly ambitious, all to mitigate against climate change and air pollution. In the field of transport, the focus is ever more shifting from fossil fuels – on to transition fuels– towards zero-emission, all with the aim to reduce harmful emissions and advocating greener alternatives.
In August of 2019 the European Commission revised their previously published Clean Vehicle Directive, tightening up and set a minimum target for 24% of all public transport buses in each EU member state to be ‘clean’ by 2025, with this minimum quota increasing based on the country’s GDP. In the Netherlands, where one of the projects’ sites is located the ambitions became even higher (during the time the project had already started and demonstration was ongoing), where the Dutch Government aims to have all new buses Zero-Emissions by 2025 and all public Transport buses Zero-Emission by 2030!
Due to the fact that public transport operations differs between countries, regions and even cities, a spread of zero-emission solutions is sought to replace the current fleets of buses. Hydrogen is one of the sought after solutions in heavy duty transport and therefore enjoying increasing attention from politics, giving political support, but also PTOs looking at the potential of the vehicles with fuel cell electric drivetrains. They use hydrogen as a fuel and produce no harmful tailpipe emissions, with a potential to create a zero emissions well-to-wheel transport system. Within the FCH-JU also a study was conducted on these fuel cell bus transport systems, which was published in the “Fuel Cell Electric Bus – Potential for Sustainable Public Transport in Europe”. Beside FCB also BEV buses can be used to reach the abovementioned goals, although in full public transport operation hydrogen can offer some advantages like fast refuelling times and longer ranges, making hydrogen interesting longer-range vehicles such as buses (high demand inner-city lines and regional outer city lines). Combining these facts, as these are the one that diesel buses offer now, hydrogen buses offer the same performance and operational flexibility, without impacting the standard customer service or time-schedules in which the current fleets operate.
Prior to the HighVLOCity project, hydrogen was showcased in prototype buses and demonstration projects, that showed the general public and other stakeholders the technology was working [ CUTE and HyFleet Cute (>2001)]. These projects were followed by CHIC, where a first generation of commercial (although still prototypes) FCBs were demonstrated and the learnings and emerging conclusions triggered follow-up projects focused on further demonstration, technology improvements and larger scale bus fleets deployment, incorporating projects for their supporting HRSs.
In Figure 1, an evolution of the different bus projects is displayed in a timeline, including the CHIC, High V.Lo.City HyTransit and 3Emotion projects, followed by the large scale implementation of large fleets in the JIVE and H2Bus Europe initiatives, surpassing the 1 to 2 digit numbers from the HighVLOCity project and reaching fleet sizes of 300-600 buses.
Projects also have even been combined and operated buses in parallel within the same city. A good example for this is the City of Aberdeen in Scotland that operated a fleet of 10 hydrogen buses in HyTransit and HighVLOCity. 6 buses (operated at stagecoach) and 4 buses (operated at First) combined (at that time) in Europes largest FCB fleet ran in the same city, fuelling at the same station.
Figure 1: Source HyTransit final Report
HighVLOCity
The High V.LO-City project, through the use of, highly efficient, FCH buses and a comprehensive, modular maintenance and hydrogen infrastructure build-up, provided facilitated substitution of conventional buses in public transport fleets. Building on the arguments of the Public Transport (PT)Operators of the High V.LO-City demonstration sites, Liguria, Antwerp, Groningen and Aberdeen and of previous fuel cell bus demo sites, that led them to start substituting their conventional fleets with FCH buses, the High V.LO-City project further demonstrates the economic and technical viability of these buses and of intelligent infrastructure solutions, necessary for broad market introduction.
The project locations, with regards to past and future demonstration project cities, offered key stakeholders an important perspective for broader European-wide fuel cell and hydrogen business development and investment decisions, engaging with new industrial players to get involved in the advancing deployment of these technologies.
The project also included innovative solutions to current trends in the operations of public transport fleets that required great flexibility in refuelling and maintenance infrastructure. Modular build-up of refuelling infrastructure linked to low cost low carbon hydrogen sources as well as models for inter-modular fleet management, in combination with other modes of transport were tested as well.
Projects’ objectives
The overall objective of High V.LO-City was to facilitate rapid deployment of the last generation of FCH buses in public transport operations, by addressing key environmental and operational concerns, that transport authorities are facing today. Through the strategic locations of the project demo sites the project envisioned broad dissemination of actual FCH bus performance in normal bus operations to other first time users and potentially interested transport authorities in their geographical area.
The detailed objectives of the High V.LO-City project were to:
1. Implement a fleet of 14 H2 hybrid FC commercial public buses in 4 regions across Europe with significantly enhanced fuel economy and high levels of availability, and with reduced maintenance and external technical input requirements
2. Establish and enhance three hydrogen production and refuelling facilities, linked to economical and sustainable hydrogen production plants, reducing the life cycle costs of H2 provision and transport
3. Create a network of successful FCH bus operation sites, so called Clean Hydrogen Bus Centres of Excellence (CHBCE), linking High V.LO-City sites with similar fuel cell bus demonstrations in Europe, connecting regions form Italy, through Switzerland, Germany with Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, to facilitate the dissemination of clear and factual information on hydrogen bus operations to transport authorities and key decision makers.
4. Evaluate the entire life cycle costs of buses, from their productions up the final operation aspects in view of the requirements of the EU Directive on the promotion of clean and energy efficient road transport vehicles (COM2009/33).
5. Contribute to the commercialization of H2 Hybrid buses in Europe, supporting the transferability of results achieved. High V.LO-City will set up business cases and Regional Mobility Plans as a success case and success models to be re-used in other European regions.
6. Contribute to the standardisation of authorization protocols for hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, through the analysis of existing experiences and existing barriers of national and regional regulatory frameworks in Europe.
7. Facilitate EU objectives and policies by researching and demonstrating the environmental, human health, energy efficiency, social and economic benefits of hydrogen powered buses in public transport,
8. Pro-actively communicate project advantages to citizens, communities, decision-makers and decision-formers so as to increase awareness, promotion, deployment and broader adoption of hydrogen fuelled vehicles, in particular for public and collective clean transport.
Combining these objectives with a strong consortium of cross-Europe players, the HighVLOCity had a real versatile and experienced group of partners, that worked together to reach the set ambitions and objectives. Above, the figure displays the consortium partners split over the different disciplines to successfully execute the project. Below, the map displays the partners in the different regions across Europe working together in the HighVLOCity-project. The partnership included partners from Scotland, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Denmark.
Project Results:
See attached final report incl. figures, tables and photographs of the full length of project for the complete overview of the abovementioned
Potential Impact:
See attached final report incl. figures, tables and photographs of the full length of project for the complete overview of the abovementioned
List of Websites:
www.highvlocity.eu
