Air Liquide, DATS 24 and the Port of Antwerp have joined forces in the HyTrucks consortium to deploy 300 hydrogen-powered trucks and the related renewable hydrogen production infrastructure and supply chain assets in Belgium by 2025.
Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO of the Port of Antwerp, said: “We want to give hydrogen every chance as an energy carrier, a basic element for chemistry and a fuel, and are therefore committing ourselves as an active pioneer in the hydrogen economy.”
1000 trucks goal
The HyTrucks project aims at enabling in total 1,000 hydrogen-powered zero-emission trucks on the roads and building the adequate infrastructure connecting Belgium, the Netherlands and western Germany. The project aims to deploy hydrogen-powered trucks mainly in the area around the Port of Antwerp and major logistics hubs in Belgium. Hydrogen trucks will be used for intensive local and international transport.
The HyTrucks initiative is one of the largest European projects to deploy zero-emission heavy-duty fleets in Europe’s most intense traffic areas. It aims at reducing significantly CO2 emissions by an estimated amount of more than 100,000t per year, equivalent to 110m km driven, thanks to 1,000 trucks, and a first network of 25 high-capacity hydrogen stations connecting Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Duisburg.
In Belgium, the HyTrucks project aims at reducing CO2 emissions by an estimated amount of more than 30,000t per year, equivalent to 33m km driven.
A growing set of partners representing the whole value chain -truck manufacturers, transport companies, leading fuel cell suppliers- have already agreed to join the initiative. The companies represented in the larger HyTrucks initiative in the three concerned countries will jointly perform the feasibility study.