H2Accelerate – new collaboration for zero emission hydrogen trucking at mass-market scale

Daimler Truck, IVECO, OMV, Shell and the Volvo Group have formed a new collaboration to help create the conditions for the mass-market roll-out of hydrogen trucks in Europe.

As a growing number of governments and businesses align on a common vision of a net zero emissions energy system, the H2Accelerate participants believe that hydrogen is an essential fuel for decarbonisation of the truck sector.

Achieving a large-scale roll-out of hydrogen fuelled trucks is expected to create new industries – zero carbon hydrogen production facilities, large-scale hydrogen distribution systems, a network of high-capacity refuelling stations for liquid and gaseous hydrogen, and the production of hydrogen fuelled trucks. H2Accelerate believes that synchronised investments across the sector during the 2020s will create the conditions for the mass-market roll-out of hydrogen fuelled heavy duty transportation which is required to meet the European ambition of net zero emissions by 2050.

The decade-long scale-up is expected to begin with groups of customers willing to make an early commitment to hydrogen-based trucking. These fleets are expected to operate in regional clusters and along European high-capacity corridors with good refuelling station coverage. During the decade, these clusters can then be interconnected to build a truly pan-European network.

Support from the public sector will be required throughout the scale-up. Under H2Accelerate, the participants expect to work together to seek funding for early pre-commercial projects during the first phase of the roll-out. In parallel, the participants will engage with policy makers and regulators to encourage a policy environment which will help support the subsequent scale-up into volume manufacturing for hydrogen trucks and a Europe-wide refuelling network for zero carbon hydrogen fuel.

Phase 1 will see the rollout of the first 20 or so high-capacity fuelling stations and 100s of trucks at selected locations/clusters to prove high-capacity concepts. Phase 2 aims to achieve Europe-wide coverage of major corridors in the second half of the 2020s, seeing volume manufacture in the 1,000s per year to rapidly reach >10,000 trucks and a network of high-capacity/reliability stations.