Investments in infrastructure has fueled Germany's transition to hydrogen-powered trains

Germany unveiled its first hydrogen-powered commuter trains in 2022. Investment in technology and infrastructure were key to driving their adoption.

• Germany introduced its first hydrogen-powered commuter trains in August, 2022.
•  Technology and infrastructure upgrades will be critical as transportation systems evolve. 
• This article is part of The Great Energy Transition series.

In the race to transition to sustainable transportation, Europe has one major advantage over the United States: its expansive rail network. In 2019, the European Union racked up 415 billion passenger kilometers traveled on its network, compared to around 32 billion in the US.

Though trains are significantly better for the environment than the glut of internal-combustion engines, they are not emission-free. In Europe, around 45% of railway lines are not electrified and typically use traditional diesel engines to transport commuters, with all the greenhouse-gas emissions that those entail.

That's why one rail operator in Germany took the bold step to switch its trains to a type of fuel that has never been tested on trains before: hydrogen. While not cheap, the investment needed to make the switch will pay dividends as other transportation systems phase out fossil fuels. 

On August 24 this year, the new, emission-free alternative became a reality. In Lower Saxony, in northern Germany, the first hydrogen-powered commuter trains were officially commissioned for full-time service after two years of extensive testing. By the end of this year, all 14 of the trains serving Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, and Buxtehude will be powered by hydrogen. It's a transition that cost the region's Ministry of Transport 85 million euros.

"We wanted to reduce carbon emissions, and with this project, we are reducing 4,400 tonnes of carbon emissions every year," Melina Gnisa, a spokesperson for LNVG, the region's state-owned rail operator, said. "There were no catenary," or overhead power wires, "so we had to look for alternatives because our company decided we don't want to use diesel anymore."

The train that met the brief was the Coradia iLint, manufactured by the veteran French rolling-stock producer Alstom, which had been in development since 2014.

Financing technology is key to transition

Research and development were funded in part by Germany's National Innovation Programme for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology, which aims to grow the technology in the country. For the iLint, Alstom received 8 million euros in federal German funds to help get the train up and running.

"Since the beginning, the attitude of the authorities in Germany was definitely in favor of hydrogen, and they were with us to take the risk and to develop it," said Brahim Soua, the vice president of Alstom's Regional Rolling Stock platform, who worked to bring the iLint project to fruition.

"Germany put in place a financing process to help and to introduce the technology in railway because we know very well that when you are introducing a new technology, there is an investment needed at the beginning," Soua said, adding that this was critical to getting the project off the ground. Otherwise, the lack of hydrogen infrastructure would have rendered the project not viable.

Alstom is positioning the iLint as a like-for-like replacement for diesel trains serving regional rail routes that have not been electrified. It's not surprising, given that the design is an evolution of the company's diesel-powered Lint. Spec-wise, the iLint is very similar to its predecessor, with a maximum speed of 140 kilometers an hour and seats for around 150 to 200 passengers, depending on seating configuration.

Recouping on the infrastructure investment as the world becomes greener

But without a solution to the "chicken and egg" infrastructure problem, it's hard to roll out a new fuel technology because of the costs involved.

"The acquisition price of a hydrogen train is higher than a diesel one," Soua said. "You need investment, at least for the infrastructure and the fueling stations, which don't exist."

The good news, though, is that as technology is built out, the economics should start to make more sense. According to Soua, maintenance costs on hydrogen trains are much lower, and hydrogen-powered trains will cost less than diesel after about 15 years of operation.

So to seed the deployment, the German federal government also put up an additional 4.3 million euros to fund a refueling station in Bremerhaven — and this could have consequences that extend beyond the railway.

"When you have a refueling station somewhere, you can also use it for buses, trucks, automobiles, and so on," Soua said. "We need to see it globally as an ecosystem in such a way that even the investment is split on several transportation needs."

Now that the railway is fully operational, the fueling station will deposit around 270 kilograms of hydrogen in each 15-to-20-minute-long refueling period. At the moment, hydrogen is manufactured off-site and brought in by truck. The plan is to eventually have the site make its own "green" hydrogen, by having the chemical process take place with water and the electrolysers on-site. This requires a lot of electrical energy, but due to some geographic luck, it shouldn't be a problem.

"We're in the north of Germany, and there's the North Sea with offshore wind power — there's a lot of opportunities to produce the hydrogen," Gnisa said.

It's too early to draw any definitive conclusions about the success or lack thereof from Lower Saxony's experience, but Alstom is optimistic. The company has already signed up its second customer from Germany, as the Rhine-Main region has ordered 27 iLint trains, and similar contracts have been inked in Italy and France. Thanks to hydrogen, in the not-so-distant future, many billion more rail kilometers traveled in Europe — and the rest of the world — could be carbon-free, too.