Boris Watch

Well, hydrogen power.  It is, let us remember, just a way of moving electricity rather inefficiently from one place to another.  It’s not the answer to global warming on its own, you require a carbon-neutral electricity supply first and if you’ve got that, why not have electrically powered vehicles like trams or metros, which do the whole moving thing a lot more efficiently.

However, if you’re going to have self-propelled vehicles in any great number, hydrogen power is better than nothing, not least because it reduces emissions at the point of use to, basically, water, which has to be a Good Thing in a city environment.

Obviously, therefore, Boris has canned it.  What?  Let’s examine this a bit more closely:

“The key objectives of the project were not met. We were looking for original equipment manufacturers to produce these hydrogen vehicles from the beginning,” said a TfL spokeswoman.

“We turned out to be a bit before our time on this one. We not saying it is dead forever. We will be looking at the market in a year or two and perhaps the current fuel crisis may mean more manufacturers will be looking to develop these kind of vehicles,” she said.

The original scheme, announced in February 2006 under London’s previous mayor Ken Livingstone, aimed to introduce 70 new hydrogen vehicles to London by 2010.

This doesn’t quite back up the ‘Boris is a big green lying meanie’ story, then.  The proposed vehicles were a huge range of things from police motorbikes to buses, and the buses actually took most of the cash.  On which note:

Around 10 of the hydrogen-powered vehicles were buses and TfL confirmed investment in this aspect of the project will continue. “This decision does not affect the hydrogen bus project, of which 10 vehicles will begin operating by 2010, as planned,” the spokeswoman explained.

So we still get the buses.  Where’s Phil Taylor when you need him?  Ah, yes, I remember it well:

One of the Mayor’s own capital expenditure plans for the buses, announced last November, is to spend £10 million on just 10 experimental hydrogen powered buses. The Mayor might think it is his job to give US bus manufacturers R&D money but some of the rest of us are not so sure.

Boris seems quite sure, Phil.  Care to revise your opinion?  Of course, Boris also thinks its his job to lead his own personal bus procurement vanity projects, only his are at a cost of rather more than £10m, without the environmental benefit.

So, how to sum up?  It’s quite possible that it wouldn’t be feasible to get hydrogen powered motorbikes under policeman by 2010.  On the other hand, it’s good that hydrogen powered buses, which are more important, aren’t being canned, not least because it makes Phil Taylor look like a prat.  Most importantly, it’s important to read the small print on these things before rushing to judgement.  It’s all about the money, in the end, and while £4m isn’t now being spent on hydrogen vehicles, remember Boris is spending a million quid on low carbon taxis, plus keeping the £10m on the buses.  Warm fuzzy feelings all round, eh?  Er, not quite:

The liquid hydrogen, which is derived from natural gas reformation and is liquefied, will be supplied by Air Products from its facility in Rotterdam.

You see, there isn’t a hydrogen economy yet.  We don’t have the hydrogen supply industry or even the clean electricity we can use to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, so we have to use carbon-emitting energy sources like natgas to get the stuff in the first place, and I bet getting the stuff from Rotterdam to London isn’t carbon-neutral.  All we gain from this project, therefore, is cleaner local emissions and a head-start in understanding how to operate public transport in a future hydrogen economy.  Baby steps, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

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