Is hydrogen the future in inland shipping?
Sailing on green hydrogen, as the Antonie will do, is clean. The skipper speaks of a CO2 reduction of 880 tons per year compared to a ship that runs on diesel, for example. Sounds great, but there are still many challenges at the moment. Two important ones: it’s expensive and takes up a lot of space.
Kees de Vries is an expert in the field of greening in shipping and involved in the project. “Building is expensive, just like the hydrogen,” he says. The Antonie is partly being built thanks to millions in subsidies. According to him, it is still too early to be able to sail at sea. “Then you have to take so many containers with hydrogen with you that you have lost half of your cargo space.”
Whether there is a future in it? Kees de Vries thinks so. “It should not be limited to one ship. We all want fewer emissions, so shipping has to go along with that. But hydrogen is one of the solutions.” De Antonie is a pilot project to learn from for the future. De Vries: “I think that hydrogen will only really conquer a large market if skippers can also fill it up.”