I'm not really sure there is any place for a discussion - you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells).

With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local transformer and installs some new wires and that's it.

Or even better, do what the city mass transit company does here in Brno, Czech Republic - get trolley busses with batteries, that charge from the overhead wires while on the way, so they can then continue to serve additional destinations past the terminus of road electrification.

It is also super handy for any road work, they just automatically stow their collectors and then once again under wires, deploy them. There is usually a small trough around the wires at this spot, guiding the 2 collectors to the 2 wires. As a result, the driver does not have to leave the vehicles when connecting or disconnecting from wired power.

And it looks super cool! :)

While I agree with you; just to be clear it's not "slightly" beef up the local transformer. If you imagine a medium sized depot with 50 buses stabled at any one time, and 300kW chargers (I believe you could go higher), that's 15MW peak which is not trivial to add in many cities overnight. You really need some sort of HV connection for that kind of load, the existing local LV distribution grid isn't going to handle it.

I do definitely think green hydrogen has a big future ahead of itself though. We still use an absolutely ridiculous about of H2 in industrial processes (especially fertilizers).

Europe could produce huge amounts of fertilizers in the summer in the future with all the excess solar and wind it has via this method.

It seems to me hydrogen skipped a step - focus on replacing hydrogen feedstocks in industrial processes directly with green hydrogen, instead of replacing stuff up the chain that can be done with batteries directly anyway.

> you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells)

Australia kind-of already had 'hydrogen' infrastructure and supply chains already, in LPG or 'autogas'. LPG (or dual petrol/LPG) used to be a popular option for small vehicle fuel in Australia in the 2000s though has slowly declined due to petrol/electric hybrids coming along.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-19/lpg-cars-disappearing...

That said, it's possible to convert diesel engines to burn a 90% hydrogen/10% diesel mix, which could dramatically alter those numbers: https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2024/08/converting-diesel-engin...

It shouldn't be too difficult to bring back 'autogas' infrastructure in Australia. And if we can, I don't see why others couldn't deploy it made sense to do so. Liquid/gas fuels make much more sense in very-low to moderate density areas with long distances between populated centres. Batteries make much more sense in high population density areas with relatively short trips.

Whilst I agree it's not as ideal as a true zero-emissions thing, it's certainly a stepping stone to greatly accelerate the decarbonisation of our fuels, by allowing many to convert internal combustion engines to use much cleaner fuels, without having to buy brand new vehicles.

Given that petrol and diesel these days are usually almost double the cost per litre of LPG in Australia, and that a lot of decently sized long range EVs are still very expensive in Australia, especially considering cost-of-living pressures and the distances many Aussies have to drive in rural and remote areas where EVs just aren't practical, I'm a little surprised LPG hasn't made a comeback.

Australia has since kicked off a project to construct a large green hydrogen generation plant in Western Australia, due to be producing by 2029 and fully operational by the end of 2031, so hydrogen could become a pretty big deal in by 2030.

https://research.csiro.au/hyresource/murchison-hydrogen-rene...

Are those new in Brno? Can't remember them from the last time I was there, but sure sounds interesting

> you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells).

Unless you burn the hydrogen, you aren't producing any emissions... unless you count water as an emission. Fuel cells don't produce any emissions.

Burning hydrogen though, does produce some emissions, however it's pretty minimal. I believe it's only NOx, and even then at far lower rates compared to gas vehicles. No CO2, CO, or any other stuff from gas or not-fully-burnt gas.

That said, I agree hydrogen has seemingly no place in something like buses. Frankly, the only places that I see hydrogen has any future is either going to be for planes and boats, or potentially for intermediate storage akin to batteries (i.e., create hydrogen with excess solar/wind power).