In a dusty desert in Colorado, USA, the first hydrogen fuel cell passenger train in the United States is being tested on a test track.

It is manufactured by the Swiss manufacturer Stadler and is fully named FLIRT (Fast Light Intercity and Regional Train).

It will soon be shipped to Southern California and is planned to become part of the commuter rail service by the end of 2024, transporting real passengers.

In the railway circle, people's views on hydrogen-powered trains are almost two extremes. For some, it represents the future of railway transportation. For others, it is just a huge, flashy gimmick.

The transportation industry is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. In the pursuit of decarbonization of the transportation industry, electric vehicles often take the lead.To achieve the Biden administration's goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, other forms of transportation, such as trains, also need to seek new sources of energy.

The best way to decarbonize railways has always been a subject of fierce debate among regulators, the industry, and climate activists.

Advertisement

California has put forward preliminary plans. The state recently enacted new regulations requiring that all new passenger trains operating in the state achieve zero emissions by 2030, and all new freight trains achieve zero emissions by 2035. Federal regulators may follow suit.

The debate around decarbonization is partly technical, mainly discussing whether hydrogen fuel cells, batteries, or overhead wires can provide the best performance under different railway conditions.

But it is also a political issue: to what extent can or should decarbonization make railways achieve a broader transformation.For decades, the government has largely followed the wishes of large freight railway companies. Decarbonization may change this phenomenon, or further consolidate it.

So far, hydrogen has been very popular in California. In the past year, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has ordered 10 hydrogen-powered FLIRT trains, costing $207 million.

After the hydrogen-powered trains mentioned at the beginning are put into service, the next railway line to receive hydrogen trains may be the railway service in the Central Valley area.

This line will connect Sacramento with the California High-Speed Rail, which is a system under construction and will eventually connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.

By analyzing different zero-emission railway technologies, the California Transportation Agency found that hydrogen trains, which convert hydrogen into electrical energy through on-board fuel cells, have a better range and shorter charging (hydrogen refueling or charging) time than ordinary electric trains.Hydrogen fuel cells are also cheaper than overhead power lines (or "electrification" in industry jargon). It is estimated that installing overhead power lines on the three main intercity lines in the state would cost $6.8 billion.

The California High-Speed Rail and its shared tracks with the Bay Area Caltrain commuter service will both be powered by overhead power lines, as electrification is a necessary condition to reach speeds of over 160 kilometers per hour.

At the same time, installing overhead power lines on other passenger networks in California would require the consent of the U.S. BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway) and Union Pacific Railroad. These two major freight railroad companies own most of the tracks in the state.

This makes the electrification plan more complicated, as the two companies have long opposed the installation of power lines above the tracks, citing the potential interference with double-decker freight trains.

According to a report from the American Railway Association, an industry trade organization, electrifying the 144,000 miles of freight tracks across the United States would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.The organization claims that even electrifying shorter sections of the track would lead to ongoing disruptions in train traffic, and freight customers who originally used trains would switch to using trucks as a result.

Electrification also requires the cooperation of power companies, making railways susceptible to other disruptions, including delays in grid connections for renewable energy developers.

Marcin Taraszkiewicz, an engineer at HDR, a civil engineering and architectural firm, who has been involved in the California Department of Transportation's hydrogen train project, said: "We have a long section of track outside urbanized areas.

Powering those rugged areas can be a challenge, especially when the infrastructure must be designed to withstand natural disasters such as wildfires and earthquakes. If the wires break, you will be in trouble."

The American Railway Association believes that California's railway emission regulations are too many and too fast, especially considering that the fuel efficiency of freight railways is already three to four times that of truck transportation.In 2023, the American Railway Association sued the state over its latest railway emission regulations, and the case is still under review.

Although the association generally prefers hydrogen over electrification as a long-term solution, it believes that this alternative technology is not yet mature enough to meet the industry's needs.

An organization called Californians for Electric Rail also considers hydrogen to be an immature technology.

The founder of the organization, Adriana Rizzo, said: "From an environmental and cost perspective, this is a very repetitive and not direct enough approach."

The synthesis, transportation, and use of these tiny hydrogen molecules may be inefficient. Currently, the energy required per kilometer for hydrogen-powered trains is about three times that of overhead line trains.At the same time, the environmental benefits of hydrogen (the purpose of using this new technology) are still largely theoretical, as the vast majority of hydrogen today is produced by burning fossil fuels such as methane.

Natural gas utilities have been one of the biggest driving forces in the hydrogen energy industry, as they are already capable of producing and transporting natural gas.

There are mixed opinions about the advantages of hydrogen-powered trains. In 2022, after the completion of a pilot project, the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany determined that the operating costs of this technology will be 80% higher than other zero-emission alternatives in the long run.

Kyle Gradinger, Assistant Deputy Director of the California Department of Transportation responsible for railways, believes that there is some "social media exaggeration" about the issue of hydrogen trains.

He said that in the tests, the hydrogen-powered FLIRT train was "as good as, if not better than, what we expected."Gladinger said that since hydrogen-powered trains also use electric motors, they offer many of the same benefits as trains powered by overhead lines. Both technologies will be quieter, cleaner, and faster than diesel trains.

The California transportation company hopes that by 2030, all the hydrogen needed for the trains will come from zero-emission sources, a goal supported by the draft clean hydrogen rules released by the Biden administration in 2023.

California is one of the seven "hydrogen hubs" in the United States, where public-private partnerships will receive billions of dollars in subsidies from the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to develop hydrogen technology.

Gladinger said it is too early to say whether the California transportation authority can raise funds for its hydrogen fueling stations and supply chain through these subsidies, but it is definitely possible.

So far, California is the only state in the United States that has purchased hydrogen-powered trains.However, supporters like Rizzo are concerned that all these investments in hydrogen infrastructure will hinder the transformation of California's passenger rail.

Rizzo said, "Why should we spend millions of dollars on new trains and build all this infrastructure, only to continue to suffer the same poor service as now? These systems can carry more passengers."

Rizzo's team, along with allies such as the California and Nevada Rail Passengers Association, believe that decarbonization is an opportunity to build better infrastructure, bringing it up to the same level as the vast majority of high-speed passenger train services around the world.

Although the initial investment in overhead wires is high, electrification can reduce operating costs by continuously providing cheap and efficient energy.

Electrification also improves acceleration, allowing trains to be scheduled more closely, with the potential to provide better service. This service model is functionally more like an urban subway system, rather than once a day.The California Department of Transportation has a long-term plan to significantly improve rail service and speed, which may ultimately require electrification through overhead power lines.

However, the agency believes that, at least for the next few decades, hydrogen energy is the most feasible way to achieve the state's ambitious climate goals.

That is, the funds, political will, and the desire to fight with freight railways and utility companies are not yet fully ready.

Gradinger said, "If you can achieve it, the gold standard is overhead catenary electrification. But at least for the next ten or twenty years, we will not reach a service level worth investing in for intercity."

Rizzo hopes that as the federal government sets more railway emission regulations, the motivation to power railways through overhead power lines will become increasingly sufficient.Other countries have also reached such conclusions. In 2015, policy changes in India enabled nearly half of the country's railway tracks to be electrified within less than a decade.

The United Kingdom's decarbonization plan for transportation indicates that electrification will be the "main approach" for the decarbonization of the railway industry.

These changes complement the powerful freight industry. The world's most powerful trains are electric, and they are responsible for transporting ore in South Africa and China.

In 2002, Russia completed the electrification of the 9,170-kilometer Trans-Siberian Railway, proving that freight trains running on electric wires can operate over very long distances under extremely harsh conditions.

The situation in the United States may also change, albeit slowly. The BNSF Railway's stance on the electrification of a corridor in Southern California seems to have softened, allowing the California High-Speed Rail Authority to construct overhead wires above it.Rizzo and her team hope to make these projects easier by promoting state legislation that exempts overhead power lines from the California Environmental Quality Act.

In 2015, the affluent Bay Area suburb of Atherton filed an environmental lawsuit over tree removal and visual impact.

The lawsuit delayed UCLA's electrification project for nearly two years. Therefore, efforts at the legal level can prevent similar situations from occurring.

New innovations may blur the boundaries between different types of green railway technologies.

The California Rail Authority has ordered an electrified train equipped with batteries, which can charge during the journey from San Francisco to San Jose, and then continue to travel to Gilroy and Salinas using the battery.One day in the future, similar systems may be deployed in Southern California, where trains can charge through Los Angeles' transportation system and use batteries in more remote areas on the way to Santa Barbara and San Diego.

New hydrogen technology may also bring about a transformation for passenger railways. The FLIRT train tested in the Colorado Desert is version 1.0.

In the future, using ammonia as a hydrogen carrier may extend the range of hydrogen trains and make refueling smoother.

Taraskevich said, "With hydrogen, there is more room for progress."

However, Taraskevich also warned that in a country like the United States, which has invested little in passenger railways over the past century, new technologies can only do so much.The railway system in the United States often lacks siding designs, grade-separated structures, and modern signaling systems. He said that the main obstacle to faster and more frequent passenger services is "not the train technology, but something else."