• Railison
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    1 year ago

    Electrify what you can, use renewable fuels like hydrogen for what you can’t.

    Hydrogen buses will have a role, but they’re not in direct competition with electric buses.

    • BakuOPM
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      1 year ago

      There’s a few things about this that surprise me:

      Melbourne isn’t already entirely, or at least mostly, electrified (not just trains, but buses too)

      Regional Vic is having all of their buses replaced too. Naturally that’s going to exclude vline coaches, but although big cities like Geelong and Ballarat make sense, smaller ones like Portland and horsham feel like much lower priorities to me

      • Railison
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        1 year ago

        They’ll be using this demonstration project to better understand the TCO of the vehicles and situate them in ideal use cases. I don’t expect these ones to stay around in the city.

        • BakuOPM
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          1 year ago

          Probably. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a few photos before that happens though. I don’t see them sticking around that long

          • Railison
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            1 year ago

            They’ll probably continue to be used around hydrogen hubs. Government is doing a lot of work to scale green hydrogen production, part of which requires there to be demand for what’s produced

            • BakuOPM
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              1 year ago

              Eh, I’m not sure I think hydrogen is the best option honestly. It seems like a lot of effort to go to, and certainly more than chicken some solar panels and a few batteries at a depot/on buses

              • AJ Sadauskas@aus.social
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                1 year ago

                @Baku @Railison Burning methane (“natural”) gas to make hydrogen to run a bus really isn’t much of a step forward, if your aim is to reduce emissions.

                Some solar panels and a battery would be a much better option.

                From TFA:

                "But Guardian Australia understands the buses will run on grey hydrogen, produced using natural gas.

                “Currently about 96% of the world’s hydrogen is produced using coal (brown hydrogen) and gas (grey). The production of grey and brown hydrogen releases carbon dioxide and unburnt fugitive methane into the atmosphere.”

                #bus #vicpol #climate #methane #ClimateChange #PublicTransport #melbourne #environment #auspol

                • Railison
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah never said that emissions reductions were the aim for this trial. They’ll be looking at how much the vehicles cost to run and maintain, and probably use that to help determine the strike price for green hydrogen subsidies down the track.

              • Andrew Bartlett@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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                1 year ago

                @Baku @Railison Battery electric busses are a well established technology, used widely, normally hard to get grants for.

                Despite this they got a 50 bus grants for the battery technology, plus 2 for hydrogen. If you want to get free money for these things it needs to be novel, and H2 is.

                Regardless, anything is better than diesel. I ride my bike on a now almost all electric bus route. I hold my breath much less often now. The reduced particulates is enough to show in the graphs for Wellington

    • Hypx@mastodon.social
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      1 year ago

      @Railison @Baku Electric buses should refer to directly electrified buses. The problem with battery powered buses is the weight and cost of the battery. It fundamental dooms that idea to non-viability, and nearly all transit agencies have found them to be nearly unusable once real-world factors are taken into account.

      For buses that can’t be electrified, it pretty much has to be #hydrogen or some other chemical fuel.