By Canadian Press

Transit advocate says green hydrogen has been slow moving for city bus projects

Aug 25, 2022 | 12:30 PM

OTTAWA — The head of an advocacy group pushing to decarbonize public transit systems says the new Canada-Germany hydrogen agreement sends a positive signal about the future of the industry.

However, Josipa Petrunic, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium, says it may be harder than the two governments think to meet their three-year target for shipments to start.

She says in five years her organization and Mississauga’s transit system have been unable to get a pilot project going to get 10 hydrogen buses on the road using green hydrogen produced in nearby Markham, Ont.

Petrunic is wondering, if players can’t even get green hydrogen shipped 100 kilometres down Ontario’s Highway 401 in five years, how will they get it shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in three years?

She says the biggest barrier is that green hydrogen carries a price tag four times that of diesel and there isn’t enough funding to close that gap.

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She says there needs to be a more co-ordinated approach from all levels of government to financially compensate for that price difference until hydrogen is mass-produced and its cost comes down.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 25, 2022.

The Canadian Press