The green hydrogen sector has been undergoing a reckoning in recent months. File photo. Photo: Marika Khabazi
Green hydrogen - which has been described by fans as the "swiss army knife" of clean energy - has enjoyed a wave of private investment and government subsidies.
While "grey" hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, green hydrogen is made using renewable electricity to extract fuel from water - and it has touted as a zero carbon solution to trucking, shipping and steel-making.
But the sector has been undergoing a reckoning.
Energy analysts at BloombergNEF have revised up their price forecasts for green hydrogen for the coming decades, while the Australian Financial Review reports several high-profile hydrogen stocks are tanking.
Illinois-based manufacturer Hyzon - which promised to be the "Tesla of hydrogen" - withdrew from Australasia before it could deliver the first 20 hydrogen-powered trucks to New Zealand. The company has now collapsed.
The $6 million in taxpayer funding earmarked for Hyzon trucks was instead spent on replacement trucks, which should be on the road this year.
But with $27 million dollars in government grants still available for either hydrogen or electric trucks, some campaigners say it is time to switch off the taxpayer tap for hydrogen.
Researchers calculate the sector attracted $86 million in government support from 2017 to 2023.
The trucking fund is one of few remaining subsidies available for clean technology, after several rounds of cuts to government climate funding.
David Keat - an engineer who used to manage oil refineries, including hydrogen production - said scarce public funding needed to go to more efficient, clean electric battery vehicles or boosting renewable power generation.
"If you're spending taxpayers' money you should be trying to go for the biggest bang for your buck. If you take the original electricity used to split the water and you put it straight into an electric motor you go nearly three times as far," he said.
"If you look at the advances in battery technology just over the last year or 18 months, it's going at the speed of light."
According to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), battery electric trucks are three to five times more efficient than hydrogen versions.
But the EECA said that was not the whole story: hydrogen can be made and stored when there was renewable electricity to spare, in quantities electric batteries can not yet achieve.
But hydrogen sceptics say batteries will soon have the increased storage required.
Hiringa Energy has built three - soon to be four - hydrogen refueling stations, with the help of $16 million in government funds.
Despite the delay of those twenty trucks, co-founder Andrew Clennett says the stations are refueling a hydrogen bus, two diesel-hydrogen hybrid concrete mixers and other vehicles including a New Zealand Post delivery truck - at prices only about 15-20 percent more than diesel. He said hydrogen has an important role at cutting emissions from the heaviest, most polluting vehicles on the road, which often worked 24/7.
"You can fill in the same as diesel, you can carry the same payload as diesel trucks. We made our hydrogen that's going into the NZ Post truck today at probably 2 o'clock in the morning, when the price of electricity was 1/100th of the what it was if I tried to produce my hydrogen at 7 o'clock when the driver turned up," he said.
The 20 trucks were commissioned by truck leasing firm TR Group.
TR Group spokesperson Brendan King said Hyzon's demise ultimately resulted in a better mix of trucks - with most of them built in Christchurch.
He said one was on the road and performing well, with others at various stages of readiness.
TR also owns electric trucks, but King said hydrogen had a place at the "big end of town".
"The hydrogen trucks are going to be far more practical when it comes to logistics. The challenge for electrifying everything is getting electrons into batteries [and] the charging infrastructure and the distribution network for electricity isn't up to doing that, and we're miles away from doing that," he said.
Hiringa's Andrew Clennett hoped that as more companies became aware of the climate pollution caused by moving their goods in trucks, they will be willing to pay a premium to reduce their impact. That means green hydrogen could be competitive, even at prices higher than diesel, he said.
As for that $27 million in government grants, at least one hydrogen model is on the approved list of trucks alongside more than a dozen battery-electric models.
EECA spokesperson Richard Briggs said the Hiringa and TR Group trial will give other businesses definitive data on whether hydrogen or battery-electric works better for them in New Zealand conditions.
"When compared to a battery-electric heavy vehicle fuelling at peak hours, the relative difference in energy efficiency becomes less of a factor when the potential electricity cost differential is included," he said.
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