Hydrogen buses to appear in another Polish city. Is this an opportunity or a costly trap?

• NesoBuses are manufactured by the Polish company PAK-PCE Polski Autobus Wodowy from the Polsat Plus Group in its own factory in Świdnik.
• It has produced and delivered 40 NesoBuses to Rybnik (20 units), Gdańsk (10 units), Konin (5 units) and Chełm (5 units).
• There is no shortage of opinions that hydrogen buses are a bad choice: hydrogen is a difficult fuel due to its compression temperature and high storage costs, as well as the economics of production.

The first buses powered by green hydrogen will hit the streets of Chełm in the coming days . Test drives are currently underway, during which drivers will familiarize themselves with the operation of the vehicles.

The next NesoBuses will be delivered to the city in June 2025, while in the autumn Chełmskie Linie Autobusowe will have all the ordered vehicles at its disposal.

Hydrogen buses emit only "distilled" water vapor

- Step by step we are changing public transport in Chełm. Currently it is free , and soon, thanks to the new fleet, it will also be very modern - says President Jakub Banaszek.

Polsat Plus Group and ZE PAK emphasize that green hydrogen is a clean and zero-emission fuel. Cars and buses running on hydrogen emit only "distilled" water vapor from the exhaust pipe . They do not emit exhaust fumes or toxic substances - apart from CO2, these are primarily nitrogen oxides or dust, in particular fine PM 2.5 dust.

- What makes me happy when we deliver buses to new cities is the fact that the forward-looking attitude of the authorities means that we are increasingly moving towards zero-emission, environmentally and resident-friendly transport – said Maciej Nietopiel, president of PAK-PCE Polski Autobus Wodorowy and vice president of ZE PAK.

Hydrogen buses from the Polish factory in Świdnik

NesoBuses, which will be available to the residents of Chełm in the coming days, are manufactured by the Polish company PAK-PCE Polski Autobus Wodowy from the Polsat Plus Group in its own factory in Świdnik.

Hydrogen buses will be refueled at a mobile, container station located at ul. Chemiczna in Chełm. The hydrogen fuel is supplied by PAK-PCE from the Polsat Plus Group.

Polsat Plus Group produces green hydrogen in its own electrolyzer in Konin. It meets international hydrogen purity standards for fuel cells in passenger cars, buses and delivery vans.

Green hydrogen production was launched in Konin using a 2.5 MW electrolyzer. Publicly accessible NESO hydrogen refueling stations were launched in Warsaw, Rybnik, Gdańsk, Gdynia, Lublin and Wrocław.

10 hydrogen locomotives are used to transport and store hydrogen – 9 with a capacity of 1,024 kg and 1 with a capacity of 371 kg.

The hydrogen bus factory in Świdnik has so far produced and delivered a total of 40 NesoBuses for Rybnik (20 units), Gdańsk (10 units), Konin (5 units) and Chełm (5 units), and another 50 buses for various cities are contracted or under construction.

Residents of many other metropolises could also use them on a test basis , e.g. Warsaw, Wrocław, Szczecin and Lublin.

The production of green hydrogen in Poland is unprofitable

There is no shortage of opinions that hydrogen buses are indeed zero-emission, but also very expensive to buy and operate. Let us recall that in November 2024, local government officials from 21 cities wrote to Paulina Hennig-Kloska, the Minister of Climate, an appeal "to take urgent action to develop and implement a financial support program for hydrogen fuel users ".

Until recently, the announcement that green hydrogen would be produced from surplus energy from renewable sources was popular.

- It all depends on the country. In Poland, we will not have surplus energy from renewable energy sources that would allow us to produce hydrogen for most of the year for a very long time. In order to produce hydrogen economically, the electrolyzer must work for almost the entire year. We cannot say that we will only use energy from surplus energy from renewable energy sources. This is a myth that functions in the industry . Today, surplus energy from renewable energy sources can be used in Spain or Scandinavian countries. These are places where the production of green hydrogen will be profitable - said Michał Hetmański, president of the Instrat Foundation, in an interview with WNP.

It was naive to assume that the costs of hydrogen production would fall

Many people in the automotive industry believed that there would be a smooth transition from using fuels such as petrol or diesel to hydrogen, supposedly another fuel.

- This naive assumption stemmed from a misunderstanding of the characteristics of hydrogen . It is a very difficult fuel due to its compression temperature, storage costs and production economics. For many years, the automotive and energy industries naively assumed that the costs of hydrogen production would fall - and it turns out that they do not - Michał Hetmański argued.

In his opinion , energy losses related to conversion, storage and transport have been ignored , which means that we will not achieve economies of scale. Energy losses in the conversion of electricity to hydrogen reach as much as 30-40 percent, and there are also losses in compression and storage.

- All this means that there is no chance of using hydrogen in passenger transport, perhaps it will be possible in heavy transport, but batteries are increasingly appearing in this segment. It is therefore a matter of time before it turns out that using hydrogen in transport makes no sense . Hydrogen, on the other hand, is perfectly suited for the fertilizer industry or for the production of green steel - assessed Michał Hetmański.