Public transportation and hydrogen power: yet a long ways away

“Because the center’s project portfolio is mostly based around domestic projects, Turkey is turning into a crucial hydrogen research point and will enter the world’s ‘hydrogen league’,” said the managing director of ICHET, Dr. Mustafa Hatipoğlu, speaking to Sunday’s Zaman. He added that although this center was created for technologies for the developing world, because their main slice funding was from Turkey, the number of international projects were limited and called for other developing nations to provide support.

New fuels, new buses

Hydrogen use in public transportation is one potential use of the fuel in vehicles and allows cities to switch to a potentially renewable alternative fuel while also relieving both carbon dioxide emissions and smog. Hatipoğlu discussed two projects in Turkey that they are currently working on, the first of which is a hydrogen-powered passenger and tourist boat in partnership with the İstanbul Ferry Lines (İDO) and the Greater İstanbul Municipality that will take trips on the Golden Horn in İstanbul and stop at six points along the waterway while refueling at Feshane in the Eyüp district. He revealed that the refueling station was currently in the works and that they had held a contest amongst Turkish universities to design and construct the boat for the project. There are currently five winners of the contest, he said.

The second public transportation project involves a partnership with the İstanbul Transportation Authority (İETT) to build the first hydrogen-electric hybrid bus to operate in İstanbul. Although projects such as HyFleet:CUTE are much more expansive, involving more than 47 buses in 10 countries, this would be the first Turkish bus of its kind, taking advantage of domestic industry and resources though funded mainly by ICHET. He revealed that the bus was being built by Güleryüz, one of the biggest domestic public transportation bus producers in Turkey and also the producer of many of the buses used in İstanbul’s İETT system today. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2010, though according to Hatipoğlu, this will most likely be 2011 due to the project being bogged down by bureaucracy.

“These kinds of projects could have come to fruition a while ago, but there’s a very extensive bureaucracy in Turkey, and we lose most of our time dealing with it. If the bureaucratic process was faster, we could complete projects in half the time we do now. Even if [İstanbul] Mayor Kadir Topbaş says yes to a project, we still need to deal with lower levels of bureaucracy,” Hatipoğlu stated.

Federico Campbell, senior project engineer at ICHET, speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, also shared a similar sentiment about government support of hydrogen-powered projects. “The technologies may have their drawbacks, but unless you as a country make the statement that you will change [your energy consumption], then this will never change,” he said. Nicolas Lymberopoulos, director of projects and programs at ICHET, speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, stressed that if the political decision to focus on such public transportation projects is made one day, then it could create a big market for hydrogen-powered buses. “This is what we support, this technological leapfrogging, or jumping to the greenest technologies,” he said.

Campbell opined that it would take at least three to five years -- corresponding to the extent of the gap between industry leader Germany and Turkey -- for fleets of hydrogen buses to exist in Turkey. “The good news is the municipalities have shown a willingness to adopt new technologies and methods for public transportation, such as the Metrobus in İstanbul. You can’t find something like this in Europe. It’s much more advanced than many European capitals,” Lymberopoulos added.

Technological setbacks

The technology, however, is far from perfect. Although hydrogen solves the pollution problem at the point of use as it only emits water during combustion, there is still pollution when producing the fuel. Because hydrogen requires an energy input to produce, the amount of cradle-to-grave pollution that hydrogen fuel requires depends on the input used. If the inputs are renewable sources, then the amount of non-renewable energy used is much lower than traditional fuels.

The costs associated with producing hydrogen are also significant. Hatipoğlu, speaking on this issue, stated that much of the equipment used to produce hydrogen gas is mostly for research purposes and thus limited in quantity -- and therefore pricy. The cheapest way to make hydrogen is by putting water through a chemical process that consumes natural gas, which may strip hydrogen of its alternative fuel status. “We want to produce hydrogen from renewable energy sources like the sun, but right now renewable energy ends up being three times more expensive than using electricity from the local power stations,” Hatipoğlu noted. The infrastructure to support such public transportation projects also does not exist in Turkey.

“It may take 20 to 30 years to see whole fleets of hydrogen-powered buses,” Campbell noted. When asked whether he could envision public transportation projects such as Metrobus retrofitted and revamped to use hydrogen-powered vehicles, Campbell said with enthusiasm, “This would be a dream project.” Further asked whether they would be willing to undertake such an endeavor, he revealed that they were actually in talks with the Ministry of Transportation to build a hydrogen-powered train and that they would gladly take on a project like Metrobus, even though “it would take an entire power plant to get the system running.”

Whether such power plants or hydrogen stations will start appearing soon is not known, though it is obvious that more research, public support and a political shift in direction need to occur before Turkey sees water-emitting buses on its roads.