The train manufacturer signed an agreement on Thursday with two Italian railway operators to supply a total of 25 hydrogen-powered trains.
Stadler Rail secured contracts with Azienda regionale sarda trasporti (Arst) and Ferrovie della Calabria (FdC) for the development, production, delivery and maintenance of 10 and 15 hydrogen-powered FLIRT H2 trains respectively.
Although the value of the order has not been disclosed, the Swiss-based company shared that the two projects are being financed under the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). These funds are available to EU member states to prepare and invest in green and digital transitions.
I’m unsure if hydrogen really can be considered green. Sure it could be generated using renewable energy but isn’t it likely, that renewable energy availability isn’t high enough for producing the necessary amount of hydrogen for these kinds of applications?
If availability isn’t high enough, we have to make sure it is in one way or another. And since there is money to make - more will try to come up with a solution to the problem.
In my opinion, it is the same with any other topic, where we to less of something - make the demand higher and people will get creative and try to earn money out of it.
The thing is, in this kind of setting cheap always wins over sustainable. So if we need lots of Hydrogen and burning fossiles is the way to get it cheaply, we’ll burn more fossiles
Sure, if it is the cheapest, people will go that route and there will always be people that do things like this, you can’t stop that. But as always, there will come restrictions and regulations - like in europe with fossil fuel cars.
I guess that’s all to say, I wish they used the environmental money to electrify the line instead since that is a proven alternative. This way it seems a bit like greenwashing to me.
Fair enough. Maybe they look to innovate train transportation even further. For example i know that in certain places, they still use coal trains, because they haven’t rebuild the line to have electricity. This could give a boost to switch some old coal trains to hydrogen. Without the power lines, your much faster and more flexible in building train lines.
I think in Germany they did some tests with hydrogen trains and came to the conclusion that catenary electrification is cheaper in the long run and also more efficient, so greener.
Interesting. Do you know, if they added the creation and maintenance into the the calculation of the catenary lines?
So I was a bit wrong, they didn’t come to the conclusion that full electrification was cheaper, but that battery trains with catenary islands are cheaper to operate than hydrogen. If they really added everything to the calculation I can’t really say, but I hope so.
Thanks for looking it up, i appreciate it. As i understand it the main discussion is about the price and not which of them are greener. But i see the versatility of rechargeable batteries - you don’t need to have contact wires everywhere.
No I don’t, sorry
