On August 25th in Richmond, California Chevron held a Road to Zero event which brought together different organizations across the hydrogen and fuel cell industry, and it allowed the public to come and learn more about the industry and how it is the keystone to decarbonizing the global economy.
Coincidentally that same day, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) completed its review work and approved the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) rule, which is the regulation that will now enforce N-79-20. The goal of N-79-20 is to outlaw the sale of new non-zero emission light-duty vehicles by 2035. While that outcome is highly desirable, what was not discussed by the hydrogen and fuel cell industry or the oil and gas firms on August 25th is what the future will look like, for California and the United States, if California stays on its current trajectory where hydrogen infrastructure is concerned. If the industry is to be responsible and enable California, and the United States, to successfully decarbonize their economies, then it is time to re-evaluate the current path and forge a sustainable path forward that can genuinely attain all of the promises of decarbonization. The alternative is leaving consumers with the belief that they were better off without FCEVs and the meddling of the hydrogen and fuel cell industry.
To see why the industry is already going to struggle with ACC II, it begins with acknowledging the elephant in the room: hydrogen fuel stations. Various organizations in California have spent about twenty years and hundreds of millions of dollars working on building out a hydrogen fuel station network. However, for all of that effort and time there are only three stations in the Sacramento area, about 18 in the San Francisco Bay Area, and approximately 35 are spread throughout Los Angeles and some of its surrounding cities. To increase the accessibility of hydrogen filling stations to make FCEVs a viable option for everyone in California will require at least 300 hydrogen filling stations. It is worth noting that 300 stations would simply allow everyone in the state to be close enough to a fuel station. To actually meet that goal as well as have enough stations available to keep at least 10 million FCEVs properly filled at all times would require significantly more fueling sites. However, with only about 56 stations already built in the whole of California and with only 12 years left before we get to 2035, the chances of overcoming such a glaring shortfall are grim at best. This is reinforced by the fact that CARB is currently projecting that instead of the 100th hydrogen fuel station being built by 2023, which is what assembly bill 8 (AB 8) requires, the 100th station is now likely going to be built by 2024.
In and of itself the alarming deficit of hydrogen filling stations would be less of an issue if the stations had an uptime availability of at least 98% of the time each month. However, sadly it is all too common for the stations to go offline on a weekly and even daily basis. For example, in the fourth quarter of 2021 CARB data shows that only 58% of the time in the fourth quarter of 2021 were the hydrogen fueling stations available to drivers of FCEVs. In the second quarter of 2022 that availability percentage rose to 75%, but it is still far below what is needed to properly maintain, let alone increase, the number of FCEV owners in California. This is especially true when considering that right now most cities in California only have one hydrogen fuel station. If the only station available in Concord, San Ramon, Santa Barbara, and many other cities goes offline, then FCEV users are forced to go to another city to get fuel or wait hours or days for the local station to come back online. Or to put it another way, the one universal complaint of FCEV owners is that the current hydrogen station network is severely inadequate and frustratingly unreliable.
Another matter that continues to undermine the hydrogen and fuel cell industry to this day is the lack of a legal framework to support the industry where hydrogen production and dispensing are concerned. Of course, many people will point to laws in California such as AB 8, senate bill 1505 (SB 1505), SB 1291, and others as proof that hydrogen production and dispensing are properly managed. However, there is presently no law in California that mandates hydrogen production and dispensing to consumers be undertaken by oil and gas companies. Instead of passing a law that forced, for example, Arco and other gasoline station operators to have at least one hydrogen pump at 25% of their stations by 2023, and at least two pumps at 50% of their stations by 2025, all of the current diesel and gasoline stations are free to pretend that hydrogen does not exist. This is an incredible failure of the hydrogen and fuel cell industry as well as the state government, because it has single handedly ensured that the oil and gas industry is free to sit by and do nothing to help transition light-duty mobility to all zero emission vehicles (ZEV) at any point in the future. It has also perversely given the general public the impression that Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota are irresponsible market leaders since FCEV drivers are frequently unable to fill-up their vehicles when they need to, and when FCEV owners are unable to fill-up they frequently blame the FCEV manufacturer. Yet, the real irresponsibility is on the executive and legislative branches in California, which have failed to pass, thus far, responsible legislation that provides the proper hydrogen fueling support for 100% ZEV new sales by 2035. Ironically, when FCEV owners are asked if they are happy with their FCEVs (not including the fueling situation) the vast majority answer in the affirmative. This means that automotive manufacturers are in fact doing their jobs in producing high quality ZEVs. Yet, the auto manufacturers get blamed by FCEV owners for the downtime of their vehicles while the oil and gas industry, and different governmental bodies in California, dodge the ire of FCEV owners.
As if the above issues are not egregious enough, to rub salt into the proverbial wound industry support organizations are also directly failing to support the very industry they are supposed to be advocating for. For example, from the evening of November 14th to the morning of November 16th the United States Hydrogen Alliance held a policy leader convention. However, instead of the vast majority of the convention being dedicated to covering the failures in California regarding hydrogen production and dispensing and how to responsibly overcome them well before 2035, the convention spent at least several sessions on the 15th focusing on other areas like hydrogen’s expansion across the United States. However, hydrogen’s successful expansion in the United States will not happen unless California can be held up as a beacon of how the hydrogen and fuel cell industry can decarbonize a major economy, like California’s. After all, if the world’s fifth largest economy is not successfully decarbonized using hydrogen, then why would things go any differently in the world’s largest economy?
There are people who will correctly point out that battery electric vehicles (BEV) are another form of ZEVs, and BEVs can help provide another way for California to meet its ZEV mandate by 2035. However, California’s electric grid has similar deficiencies to those of hydrogen production and dispensing. Consequently, even if BEVs were factored into this paper it would not change California’s current situation with regard to ACC II. Moreover, if the light-duty FCEV side of California is light years behind where it needs to be right now, then the hydrogen dispensing situation for medium and heavy-duty vehicles is essentially back in the Mesozoic Era.
As the hydrogen and fuel cell industry likes to point out, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It can be extracted from green clippings, fossil fuels, and even from water. Hyundai and Toyota have successfully demonstrated for years that FCEVs are every bit as capable of meeting consumer needs as any vehicle with an internal combustion engine, but FCEVs do so without producing any harmful emissions. Yet, California’s government has consistently neglected to force the oil and gas industry to be responsible for producing and dispensing cost-effective low-carbon intensity hydrogen, and it has failed to come up with another method by which to effectively handle hydrogen production and dispensing to meet the primary goal of ACC II. Now in approximately 12 years new light-duty vehicle sales are supposed to be limited to ZEVs, even though there is nothing about California’s current circumstances that suggest that is even remotely achievable without responsible supporting legislation. With the stage set, such as it is, one thing is unequivocally clear: if California’s state government and the hydrogen and fuel cell industry fail to build-out a robust and highly effective hydrogen production and dispensing network statewide before 2035, then it will setback the decarbonization of California’s economy by decades or, worse, indefinitely. If such upset comes to pass, then the consequences of that failure will push this world into an abyss that will be darker and more oppressive than the bottom of the deepest ocean.
Jesse Lyon, Contributor
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Fuel Cells Works, its directors, partners, staff, contributors, or suppliers. Any content provided by our contributors or authors are of their own opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
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