Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and the third most common element on Earth. It also might be the key to unlocking the decarbonization of a sector that gets relatively little climate-adaptation press coverage: rail transportation.
Now there’s a reason that railways (or railroads as our American neighbours to the south like to call them) get so little press when it comes to the climate crisis. As legacy industries go, rail is already relatively efficient from an emissions perspective.
As the Railway Association of Canada notes:
“Each year, Canada’s railways move tens of millions of passengers and 70 per cent of all intercity freight, while producing just 1.1 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And only 3.8 per cent of the country’s transportation sector GHG emissions.”
Still, in late 2020, CPKC – formerly known as Canadian Pacific Railway or CPR – became one of the first of the class-1 North American railways to begin development of a line-haul hydrogen-powered locomotive pilot. (Class-1 railways are the largest in North America, each with annual revenues over $250M USD per year. Line-haul refers to the movement of trains between cities/towns rather than lighter in-yard switching work).
CPKC’s 2020 embrace of hydrogen ran nearly parallel to the release of the Government of Canada’s Hydrogen Strategy, which, in a section on transportation, noted:
“High profile, medium- and heavy-duty fuel cell electric vehicle pilot projects will help raise awareness and best practices for pilot deployments of zero-emissions vehicles for goods and people movement in all sectors: on-road, rail, marine, and aviation.”
Since 2020, CPKC has expanded its hydrogen locomotive program with additional locomotives and hydrogen production/fuelling facilities. In 2022, the railway first used a hydrogen-powered locomotive to make a revenue run, which brought the technology one step closer to replacing a diesel engine in the company’s locomotive fleet.
So the technology is gaining traction here in Canada. But you may have some questions, so we’ve got answers.
How do hydrogen locomotives work?
This is an obvious question.
For our answer let’s go to TWI, a globally-known independent research and technology firm:
“Current technology focuses on the use of hydrogen fuel cells, which generate electricity using a chemical reaction between two electrodes… Hydrogen acts as the fuel in the cell with the addition of oxygen, generating electrical energy.
The technique used to obtain the hydrogen has an impact on how environmentally friendly the hydrogen is. Steam reforming, for example, uses harmful fossil fuels, while electrolysis using renewable energy electricity or excess power from the Grid creates no carbon emissions.”
Still a bit too complicated? It’s basically this: when combined, hydrogen, and oxygen react to produce electricity, which powers the locomotive.
But you need to get the hydrogen to begin with. You can do that by using fossil fuels or renewable energy. Obviously, by using renewable energy you avoid creating emissions in your production of hydrogen, making the whole system cleaner and greener. It’s also why this kind of hydrogen is commonly referred to as ‘green hydrogen.’
What would be the benefits of railways switching to hydrogen-powered locomotives?
There are three key benefits to note.
The first is that a hydrogen-powered locomotive fleet would not require modifying the track infrastructure already in place to take advantage of traditional approaches to electrification. For railways with thousands of miles of track, that’s a huge benefit. In fact, hydrogen is, as of now, the only feasible choice.
Of course, there would still be the need to build out hydrogen filling stations along main routes, which is nothing CPKC or any other class-1 now piloting hydrogen locomotives has done to date. But those costs are nothing compared to full electrification of the roughly 170,000 miles of freight rail in North America.
A second benefit is that hydrogen locomotives run more quietly than their diesel counterparts. Smaller perhaps as benefits go but it’s still of value, especially because rail lines often run close to where people live and work.
It’s the third benefit that’s the massive one. Hydrogen-powered locomotives emit only water — a game changer for rail transportation. Regardless of how the hydrogen is obtained, to run a train from Vancouver to Montreal without emitting CO2?
That’s an extraordinary opportunity for the industry and the country.
How long will it take for railways to replace diesel locomotives with hydrogen locomotives?
This is the (multi) billion-dollar question. And while this is a highly promising technology, it’s not clear that hydrogen will be the answer to the rail industry’s decarbonization aspirations. One reason is that hydrogen’s lack of energy density makes it more challenging to deploy it at scale in locomotives, because it must be stored as a liquid at temperatures of 250°C or less or at pressures of 5,000-1000 psi (which is hundreds of times greater than Earth’s atmospheric pressure). Neither is an easy or cost-effective task.
Of course that’s all based on current technology. Which will improve over time.
And of course this isn’t the first time in history the rail industry has looked at shifting its locomotive power sources.
The railway industry has been around approximately 200 years, with the diesel locomotive being the industry standard since it replaced the steam engine in the early 1940s.
Diesel locomotives actually originally appeared in the 1920s. They were used for lighter duty railcar switching and passenger duty before they became robust enough to haul freight. That’s a twenty-ish year gap between launch and broad adoption. It’s worth noting because it may tell us something about the length of time necessary for an innovative new technology to become an industry standard, and drive down overall sector emissions.
There also remain significant questions about hydrogen locomotive performance, particularly for railways that operate in adverse weather conditions. As the old rail-industry adage goes, ‘railroading is an outdoor sport.’
As CPKC CEO Keith Creel said at the 2022 RailTrends conference (via Trains.com):
“The next step is scalability,” Creel says, through partnering with a customer that can build enough road locomotives to prove the technology on the rugged CP main line in the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary.
“It’s the perfect test bed. If you can operate there — heavy haul, cold temperatures, the most challenging operational conditions I’ve ever experienced in my career … it will work anywhere,” Creel says.
What’s happening with hydrogen-powered trains in Europe? Don’t Europeans love trains?
They sure do.
So, it’s no surprise that in parts of Europe some passenger trains are already being converted to hydrogen-powered locomotives. The sheer mass of heavy freight rail trains vs. lighter passenger rail trains makes it almost inevitable that hydrogen locomotives will consistently move people before they consistently move goods.
Alstom, a French company that makes rolling stock (meaning locomotives or other types of railcars/tank cars/other cars that make up trains), recently announced that it has helped create the first fully hydrogen-fueled passenger train route in Germany. The company also has contracts for hydrogen trains (or ‘hydrail’) in both Italy and France. So the technology is rolling out on the continent.
And the US is close behind. American rolling stock manufacturer Stadler Rail will be producing a hydrogen-powered passenger train that will begin operating in San Bernardino, CA in 2024.
So, what’s happening now? And what’s happening next?
One way to predict the transition to renewable energy-powered locomotives is to look at how we’re transitioning to renewable energy-powered cars. Many consumers aren’t jumping directly from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, they’re bridging the gap with a hybrid car.
That’s happening in the rail sector too.
In February of this year, the US Department of Energy announced it was partnering with rail technology company Wabtec to “develop a hybrid locomotive engine that can run on both hydrogen and diesel.” Freightways reports that:
“The project… will run for four years and consist of two phases. Phase one will be development of the hybrid engine and phase two will create new hardware that would serve as the next generation of locomotive engines to be gradually introduced into the marketplace.”
Meanwhile, in Quebec, another Alstom hydrogen passenger train will make its inaugural run this summer as a first step into the North American market.
In fact, there are almost too many instances of hydrogen train pilots and deployments around the world to keep track of them all.
The technology is driving investment, and excitement, even amongst the most senior, seasoned executives.
Keith Creel again, in November 2022:
“To see [a hydrogen locomotive] two weeks ago, running down the main line at main line speed pulling a load behind it, I mean it made the hairs on my arm stand up because I would have told you two years ago it’s a pipe dream … Well, it’s not a pipe dream. It’s a reality. Still a lot of work left to do, but it’s super, super exciting.”
