The mobility sector is crucial for creating a diverse market for hydrogen and incentivises these large-scale production facilities we currently see being announced daily.

Across various mobility sectors hydrogen holds significant promise in reducing the sectors carbon footprint and generating a greener world.

Kickstarting the event was Wayne Leighty, Commercial Head of Hydrogen Mobility for Shell North America, who provided an overview of the hydrogen refuelling market.

“We do see a critical role for hydrogen in reaching net zero, especially in those hard to abate sectors. Hydrogen fuelling stations are essential to the effective introduction of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.”

As referenced by Leighty, having the refuelling infrastructure in place to support the growing demand for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is crucial for its success and decarbonising the transportation sector.

But the rolling out of the refuelling infrastructure is not without its challenges. Leighty explains, “Germany has done very well in building an initial hydrogen fuelling station network with coverage that provides access to the fuel.

“It has relatively few fuel cell vehicles on the road yet as compared to California where there are arguably too few hydrogen fulling stations to serve even the existing 10,000+ fuel cell vehicles very well. So California is in that position on infrastructure so we’re right back to chickens and eggs.

Clearly refuelling infrastructure is key for the hydrogen mobility market and is crucial to its growth. But how is hydrogen actually being applied? What are some of these technologies? The next speaker on the webinar provided clarity on this subject.

Radisa Nunic, Director of Public Affairs for Hydrogen and European Sales, at Worthington Industries, provided a deep dive into some of the technologies the company is actively supporting and integrating into the mobility market.

Nunic said, “Having these products in hand is good enough to get us where we are today, but we do not stop development – we continue to develop and further our various types of cylinders.”

These technologies are providing a means to optimise hydrogen technologies and fully integrate these into the mobility market. With these, the market will continue to innovate and gradually become better whilst also creating more demand.

But why could these technologies be so vital and important? When prompted on the technological importance and some of the challenges facing it, Nunic said, “Without the products we offer, there are no vehicles – we cannot fuel hydrogen vehicles without our components.”

The final speaker of the webinar helped to broaden the discussion and introduce the audience to another key aspect of the mobility industry – how hydrogen is actually powering vehicles.

Hydrogen fuel cell systems from Ballard are being utilised in transportation applications in order to decarbonise the sector. To help explore this, Kristina Juelsgaard, Head of Market Development at Ballard Europe, discussed how this is being achieved.

“Ballard fuel cells systems offer instant emissions reductions when replacing diesel solutions on trucks, busses, trains and ships.”

One of the biggest debates in the industry is around the rivalry between all-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells Juelsgaard gave her verdict on this stating, “The optimal solution is a hybrid solution of both battery and fuel cell vehicles. The two technologies complement each other very well.”