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The green hydrogen production unit, from renewable energy free of CO2, currently supplies around fifty trucks. Will nuclear power one day have to be used to change scale? Extract from the magazine “Nous, les Européens” broadcast on Sunday December 5, 2021 at 10:40 am on France 3.
As with any vehicle, the hydrogen-powered truck is refueled at the “H2” service station. Nothing more trivial, except that it is necessary to manufacture this fuel, that is to say to produce hydrogen continuously. And it was near the town of Niedergösgen, in German-speaking Switzerland, that the country’s first production plant was built.
Seen from the sky, the site is nothing spectacular. Here, the energy to produce the fuel comes from the nearby hydropower plant, which is green energy without carbon emissions. Five turbines are at work inside the plant. Part of the energy produced is specially dedicated to the production of hydrogen which will be used for decarbonizing heavy vehicle traffic.
Already eight service stations
“In a power plant which has 50 megawatts of installed power, we extract 2 megawatts to supply our hydrogen production unit”, explains David Sautter, engineer of the company Hydrospider, to the magazine “We, the Europeans” (replay). Water is put in contact with electricity to produce this 100% renewable fuel for emission-free mobility.
The hydrogen is then stored in containers that a truck loads daily. Direction the eight service stations with this production sufficient to supply 50 trucks today. And the objective is to have 1,600 heavy goods vehicles running in 2025. A change of scale for which a lot of energy will have to be found in order to be able to produce, even if it means resorting to nuclear power. A sensitive question …
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