Tokyo The hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai I am testing in Tokyo’s Odaiba area looks and feels just like any luxury sedan. It’s also as quiet as an all-electric or hybrid vehicle. Seven years after the Mirai was launched, hydrogen vehicles are still a rare find in Japan.
Today, there are just 4,000 hydrogen cars in the country. This is only 10% of the government’s target.
The hydrogen refueling station is located a few miles away. It has the same noise and smell as a regular gas station but without the need for a tank. The station has tanks of liquid hydrogen concealed behind its walls. A male attendant wearing a red jacket operates the pump island. The process of filling the tank with 5.6 kgs of pressurized gasoline takes only three minutes.
Japan is investing in hydrogen as a possible renewable energy source.CBS NEWS
“This station is our busiest,” Takanori Okada (Iwatani Corporation’s assistant general manger for public relations), told CBS News. “We receive 40 to 50 customers per day on average.”
Another employee told me that most are there to protect their tanks. Japan only has 160 hydrogen refueling stations. Most of them are located in Japan’s three largest cities. There are approximately 30,000 gas stations in the country. A motorist can find themselves stranded with their tank empty and need to be tow. This happens about once every three months. Consumers are turning off because there are only a few vehicles to choose from and they all come with high sticker prices.
However, at the national level, there is no country more enthusiastic about hydrogen as an energy source.
“I believe the way I would describe Japanese commitment to hydrogen [is]… unwavering,” Keith Wipke from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies Program in Golden, Colorado told CBS News. “Japan has had an ongoing, long-term commitment towards hydrogen.”
Japan, a resource-poor country, began to research hydrogen after the 1970s energy crisis. Public anti-nuclear sentiment and the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 accelerated public interest in hydrogen and other clean energy options.
The government released its carbon neutrality roadmap last week. It doubled the share of renewables that provide electricity to 38% by 2030. Nuclear supplies about a fifth. The government’s hydrogen-ammonia fuel target is 1%.
Japan has placed multiple bets in hydrogen. Japan’s opening of one of the largest “green hydrogen” plants in the world, located near the Fukushima nuclear disaster, was celebrated with great fanfare last year. In 2019, it also revealed the Suiso Hydrogen Frontier, the first liquid hydrogen carrier in the world. Tokyo now has a fleet hydrogen-powered city buses. The hydrogen used to fuel the Tokyo Olympic flame this year was hydrogen.
Wipke stated that while solar energy was commercially viable for 40 years, hydrogen would have to be competitive in 10 years.
Not all hydrogen is created equally.
“The important thing to remember here is, you understand, hydrogen is as pure as how it was produced,” Monica Nagashima (Japan country manager at InfluenceMap), told CBS News.
Although the fuel doesn’t emit any carbon, hydrogen is mainly made from fossil fuels. It is the goal to commercialize “green hydrogen” schemes that make hydrogen from renewable sources.
Nagashima stated that Japan’s hydrogen ambitions are not driven by climate goals and resource scarcity.
Nagashima stated that Japan has lost its competitiveness in producing solar panels and wind turbines. However, hydrogen is a sector in which it could lead the world.
Wipke doesn’t yet see hydrogen fuel cell cars as a viable option — Californians have more than 11,000 despite having fewer stations than Japan — but he stated that hydrogen is more suitable for sectors such as heavy industry and trucks.
Heavy-duty 18-wheeler trucks hauling 80,000 lbs down the road in Colorado. They are going up in Colorado on a six percent grade over 12,000ft and want to travel, for example, New York to Los Angeles with back-toback drivers. He said, “One sleeping, one is driving.” You can do it with hydrogen.
According to the global Hydrogen Council, hydrogen will provide 18% of all global energy needs by 2050. Wipke believes that gas will continue to be a major source of energy, regardless of whether it’s wishful thinking.
He stated, “One thing that is emerging is that hydrogen will play a greater role in heavy-duty transport, and in long-term energy storage.” The production of green hydrogen will make industrial processes such as steelmaking more carbon-neutral.
