Earlier this week, the Deputy Mayor of London, Kit Malthouse, officially unveiled London’s first permanent hydrogen fuelling station.
Air Products supplied the station to Transport for London, a government agency who will now utilise the facility to fuel five hydrogen powered buses. The new fleet will run between Covent Garden and Tower Hill. The buses constitute one of the largest hydrogen fleets across Europe.
Ian Williamson, Director of Hydrogen Energy Systems at Air Products and President of the European Hydrogen Association, commented, “The opening of a fuelling station in our capital city represents an exciting step forward in the development of a low carbon transport infrastructure using hydrogen at its core. Londoners will be able to take a hydrogen-powered bus to work and see for themselves that this technology is safe, clean and hugely effective at reducing London’s transport emissions.”
Air Products will be supplying hydrogen via a new company delivery vehicle, The Hydrogen Dual Phase Tanker. The latest carrier allows hydrogen to be transported as either a liquid or high pressure gas. Consequently, the station does not need on-site compression capabilities, and as such is the first station of its kind across Europe.
Malthouse highlighted the significance of this initial gesture. He advised, “The most important thing Government can do is make a political commitment, because we know from London that when you make that political commitment the manufacturers, the suppliers of hydrogen like Air Products, the bankers, the financiers, they start to come and look with interest because what they want is a political commitment to know that they can invest with confidence in the future.”
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