Hydrogen buses are coming to Edmonton and area, fuelling hopes for a new energy economy

A hydrogen bus will soon be hitting the roads of Edmonton, and there are high hopes it will help grow the province's hydrogen sector.

The bus looks and feels like a typical city bus, but the fuel cell uses oxygen and hydrogen to generate electricity to power the bus.

The byproducts are heat and water; there are zero emissions. The heat is recovered for heating the bus; the water comes out of the exhaust pipe.

"These are ways for us to have sustainable fuel, really look at climate action and put a big punch into that," said Eddie Robar, branch manager of fleet and facility services for the City of Edmonton.

The pilot will run for one year in Edmonton; a second hydrogen bus will be piloted in Strathcona County.

"The hydrogen bus pilot is really just a symbol of all the things we want to do with hydrogen in the city. It's certainly part of our desire to be emissions-neutral by 2050," said city manager Andre Corbould.

Robar said the pilot will be judged on how the hydrogen bus handles Alberta's extreme temperatures and what type of range it has.

"We have about a little over 40 per cent of our fleet coming of age in the next four to six years and we want to take advantage of that," he said.

"We want to be able to replace that with a more sustainable option."

Robar said there is potential for hydrogen beyond changes solely to transportation.

"Our objective is really about building up Edmonton, building the region, building our city plan, having people move to Edmonton, jobs, opportunities and this is really an opportunity for us to do all of that," he said.

The hydrogen economy

Hydrogen can be sourced through electrolysis, the process of using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It can also be converted from natural gas — and Alberta is a leader in Canada when it comes to natural gas production. Both buses will use hydrogen produced in Alberta's Industrial Heartland.

In 2021, about 2.5 million tonnes of hydrogen were produced in the province, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator, and production is expected to ramp up to more than 3.5 million tonnes by 2031.

"Hydrogen is really this Swiss Army knife that Alberta already has a lot of expertise in, and given this global appetite for hydrogen, we can really be a global leader in this space," said Bryan Helfenbaum, executive director of advanced hydrocarbons with Alberta Innovates.

The element is predominantly used in industrial settings in Alberta right now, but there is an opportunity to apply it to broader markets, such as heating and power generation, said Helfenbaum.

"We already have the technologies in place to make it, to move it and to use it," he said.

Hydrogen is on fire right now globally.- Bryan Helfenbaum

A report published by the federal government in 2020 projected that hydrogen could deliver up to 30 per cent of Canada's end-use energy by 2050.

The report said that if the country seized on hydrogen opportunities, it could lead to more than 350,000 jobs and direct revenues of more than $50 billion a year by 2050.

Helfenbaum said hydrogen seems to be fashionable roughly every 20 years but he thinks the time is now ripe, considering the push to decarbonize the energy sector.

"There's a half a trillion dollars of projects that have been announced worldwide for various kinds of hydrogen supply, transportation, storage and end-use and accounting for up to one-quarter of the energy demand and millions of jobs," he said.

"Hydrogen is on fire right now globally."

Lessons from the past

BC Transit bought 20 hydrogen buses to be showcased during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler.

But in 2014, the transit authority sold them off because of maintenance costs.

"The Whistler buses were just a little bit too early to be fully successful," said Matthew Klippenstein, Western Canada regional director for the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. 

"We've had more years to mature the technology, bring costs down, bring in cleaner fuels more cheaply."

Klippenstein said about 4,000 people are currently employed in the clean hydrogen sector.

"We expect to see that grow by orders of magnitude as we're able to displace more polluting forms of energy and replace it with hydrogen and electricity and other forms," he said.

The hydrogen bus in Edmonton will officially hit the road in February.

It could go a long way toward changing Alberta's identity.

"Changing that concept of oil country to a sustainable fuel is something people don't often get an opportunity to be a part of," Robar said.

"It starts with one bus, but we're looking at many things beyond that."