In Norway, a leading country of the electric revolution, shipping company Norled, an example of sustainable innovation for many years, has now lost tens of millions on a technology that now appears to be mainly ‘dirty’, expensive and inefficient.
Website CleanTechnica came across the fuel costs for the Hydra, which amount to 1.4 million euros annually. Diesel is much cheaper anyway, but its identical electrically powered sister ship, the MF Nesvik, is also much cheaper: less than 100,000 euros in annual costs.
Delivered by truck
But more painful are the ecological costs, the blog states. The hydrogen for the Hydra is supplied by truck, 1,300 kilometers away from Germany. The combination of this transport, liquefaction and leakage means that the Hydra emits twice as much CO2 as the identical diesel boat. And forty times as much as the electric ferry on exactly the same route.
Dutch top analyst Daan Struyven (39) from Goldman Sachs: ‘Too few raw materials and outdated power grid are the source of a new energy crisis’
Forerunner Norled was for a long time the absolute market leader in clean shipping. Holidaymakers know it as the operator of numerous car ferries and fast ferries in Rogaland, Vestland, Sunnmøre and Trondheim Fjord. That the ship is officially ‘zero emissions‘ does not reduce the gap between promise and reality.
Loss of millions
But the company suffered a loss of 86 million euros in two years, partly due to the hydrogen drama, and is now cutting jobs. According to CleanTechnica’s analysis, 33 to 45 million euros of this can be traced back to the failed hydrogen adventure.
Money that could have bought two electric ferries and saved hundreds of jobs, the blog for sustainable developments qualifies.
Han de Jong: DNB is right to make a U-turn on Eurobonds
While Norway has been using ferries powered by hydroelectrically charged batteries for some time, Norled opted for the much more complex variant. In Europe, cost overruns are being circulated as another example of overly high ambitions for sustainability without taking implementation and costs into account.