Sponsored: Green Rides: Fuel Cell Vehicles Provide Important Environmental Advantages

The world is quickly recognizing that electric vehicles are the only feasible option for fully decarbonizing the transportation sector. Passenger vehicles are one of the primary sources of greenhouse gases, and the exhaust from internal combustion engines will need to be eliminated entirely if we hope to defeat climate change. When speaking about EVs, most people think of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) like the Nissan Leaf, but fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) like Toyota’s Mirai are also powered by electricity. A fuel cell consumes diatomic hydrogen molecules (H2) to produce electricity, releasing harmless water vapor into the atmosphere. BEVs and FCEVs are often referred to collectively as “zero-emission vehicles” (ZEVs).

A rivalry is developing between proponents of the two powertrains, and the bitter competition for public support is unfortunate. Elon Musk may see FCEVs as a threat to his Tesla empire and has referred to fuel cells as “fool cells”, calling the technology “mind-bogglingly stupid”. Toyota is currently being demonized by BEV advocates for speaking out boldly about the limitations of plug-ins. Thoughtful environmentalists are embracing both powertrains.

The emergence of green hydrogen as a promising climate solution is central to the debate over the merits of FCEVs. Manufactured H2 molecules are referred to as “green” hydrogen when they are produced using renewable energy. When electrolyzers powered by fossil fuels extract H2 from H2O, upstream CO2 emissions offset the environmental benefit, but that is not the case when they are powered by wind, solar, hydroelectric, or nuclear energy.

The enormous potential of green hydrogen has recently been analyzed by researchers from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Their August 2021 report, “Green Hydrogen in a Circular Carbon Economy: Opportunities and Limits” describes green hydrogen as a feasible fuel for decarbonizing light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles. It can also be used to provide the intense heat necessary to manufacture products like cement and glass that are otherwise difficult to decarbonize, and can even help deliver desperately needed low-carbon aviation fuels.

The report emphasizes that green hydrogen can be manufactured using excess intermittent solar and wind energy, stored, then used later to recreate electricity when energy demand is high, and it can be scaled to store massive amounts of energy. Giant banks of lithium batteries that might serve the same valuable purpose have significant drawbacks and will greatly increase the demand for lithium.

Many see barriers to FCEV adoption related to the difficulty and cost of distributing hydrogen fuel, but providing adequate BEV charging infrastructure to everybody will also be challenging. The researchers at Columbia see hydrogen as a much more practical transportation fuel in dense urban environments “because several thousand vehicles can be fueled by one corner fueling station compared to the need for hundreds of individual fast chargers.” Home charging is an important convenience for BEV owners, greatly reducing the need to visit public chargers, but this critical capability is hard to deliver to apartment dwellers. An ideal fueling infrastructure would support both powertrains, with BEVs favored by homeowners and FCEVs favored by renters.

The passionate argument over which ZEVs are better is understandable, given the gravity of the climate crisis, but the partisan bickering is counterproductive. Both powertrains provide synergistic environmental benefits that deserve unequivocal public support.