Hydrogen: A costly dead end for bus fleet decarbonisation

Across the country, not long after costing local authorities millions of pounds to purchase, hydrogen-fuelled buses are gathering dust in depots.

It’s a painful real-world lesson for those investing in fleet decarbonisation. In line with all technical evidence, an increasingly long list of failed hydrogen transport trials have reached the same conclusion: hydrogen has no place in bus fleet decarbonisation.

In the UK, Liverpool, Birmingham and Aberdeen councils are among those that have faced challenges with their hydrogen bus fleets. They are not alone. Globally, hydrogen bus trials have repeatedly been abandoned or hit major snags, from European neighbours Belgium, France, Germany and Poland to further afield in Canada and Japan.

Why? Hydrogen vehicles are simply too expensive, energy inefficient, operationally difficult, and lack reliable fuel supply. In many cases, they also fail to deliver the promised decarbonisation.

From the outset, hydrogen buses are approximately double the capital cost of electric buses. Compounding this, their running costs are at least three times higher than electric buses and their maintenance costs are 2-3 times higher than the diesel buses they replace.

High running costs are in large part because each bus powered by green hydrogen – which is made from renewable electricity – uses three times more electricity than an equivalent electric bus, due to their lower energy efficiency; with three times higher energy costs to match.

Hydrogen buses also require entirely new, complex and expensive refuelling and supply chain infrastructure, adding considerable cost to every mile driven as this infrastructure’s costs are recovered in the price of the fuel. Hydrogen refuelling stations are plagued with expensive maintenance problems.

Green hydrogen furthermore comes at high cost, and is currently in scarce global supply, because of the huge amount of renewable electricity needed to produce it. Electric buses simply skip this unnecessary hydrogen middleman, with all its costly inefficiencies.

With a prolonged global shortage of green hydrogen forecast, hydrogen buses risk running on polluting hydrogen made from fossil fuels should any supply problems arise. This means they would generate even higher carbon emissions than diesel buses, in a disaster for decarbonisation efforts.

With these challenges shared by all hydrogen vehicles, the question becomes whether battery electric buses can do the necessary work transporting passengers? The answer is yes.

Electric buses are fast becoming the zero-emission choice for public transport worldwide with 600,000 of them in China, and tens of thousands deployed around the world in other countries including the UK.

The main benefit of hydrogen over electrification is its flexibility: a hydrogen vehicle can be refuelled in approximately the same time as a diesel vehicle, and its operating range and patterns are similar. However, as batteries improve, electric vehicles are rapidly increasing their payloads and ranges. The current first generation of electric buses can run most routes in the UK as long as the appropriate charging infrastructure is available. Future generations will be even more capable, with longer ranges.

This year, the Government’s independent net-zero advisor, the UK Climate Change Committee, concluded there is ‘no role’ for hydrogen in powering road transport. By 2050, it advised surface transport can almost completely decarbonise by converting to electric vehicles.

‘There will be no hydrogen cars or vans, and very little or potentially even no role for hydrogen in heavier vehicles,’ it said in its Seventh Carbon Budget, reversing its earlier position that hydrogen may play some role in the heavy goods vehicle (HGV) sector.

This raises a final important system-level consideration for local authorities considering electric or hydrogen buses: the choice between electrification or hydrogen for car decarbonisation has effectively already been made.

Large swathes of the economy are expected to electrify, while the range of use cases for hydrogen is shrinking. In line with the overall energy economy, infrastructure to support electric vehicles will continue to expand.

There will not be widespread hydrogen infrastructure to match. Current hydrogen infrastructure is paltry, with refuelling stations closing rather than opening. This makes it impossible to piggyback on existing infrastructure, adding further cost and complexity.

Local authorities playing a leading role in the decarbonisation of transport must be supported with evidence-based, impartial information to avoid expensive missteps. Markets have already shown electric vehicles to be the future. Hydrogen buses have proven again and again to be a costly dead end for fleet decarbonisation.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2025 issue of LAPV. Sign up here to receive your free copy of future issues.