Alstom and Air Products, world’s largest supplier of hydrogen, signed a cooperation agreement to promote the development of zero-emission transport solutions in Poland. Under the agreement, Air Products will distribute and store hydrogen and provide the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure within its own supply chain, while Alstom will provide hydrogen fuel cell-powered trains.
The joint effort on the Polish ground is a continuation of Air Products’ partnership with Alstom undertaken in 2022 with the signing of a letter of intent to decarbonise rail transport in the Czech Republic through the use of low-carbon hydrogen.
“We want to implement solutions for hydrogen fuelling of transportation means, including rail vehicles. Together [with Alstom] we will prove that hydrogen is applicable to railways, and that the operation of hydrogen trains is a robust technology that is both safe and environmentally friendly, as well as economically efficient,” Jacek Cichosz, President of the Management Board, Air Products in Poland said.
To decarbonise the transport sector, “the development of innovative rail transportation is the right answer to this challenge. Alstom was the first to introduce a hydrogen train for commercial use, which is already being successfully used in passenger traffic,” Sławomir Cyza, CEO and Managing Director of Alstom in Poland, Ukraine and Baltic States said.
Based on Alstom’s experience in developing innovative technologies, “together with Air Products, we are ready to introduce the hydrogen train to Polish railways, thus participating in the hydrogen revolution,” Sławomir Cyza explained.
Part of Alstom’s effort to develop zero-emission transport solutions in Poland, the company made the Coradia iLint hydrogen train available for testing at the Polish Railway Research Institute in Żmigród, near Wrocław.
The train was first put into service in 2018 in Germany and since then, it has been also tested in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, and France. In addition, Alstom presented the hydrogen train in the Czech Republic and Slovakia during its Railshow which occurred on 17-25 May 2022.
By combining Alstom’s state of the art hydrogen technologies and Air Products’ 60 years of experience in the production and distribution of hydrogen, the partners guarantee significant technological advances and gain a joint competitive advantage in the market. The cooperation undertaken by Air Products and Alstom opens Polish rail transport to future zero-emission technologies.
Air Products has pioneered deployments of hydrogen-powered public transport. After demonstrating a hydrogen-powered city bus in Jaworzno, conducted jointly with partners bus manufacturer Solaris, PKM Jaworzno and the city government, the company has taken another step toward applying hydrogen to transportation, this time by rail.
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