On a chilly day, a brand new prepare puffs out clouds that appear to be smoke, identical to a conventional steam engine. However the prepare—which runs on hydrogen gas cells, not coal—doesn’t create any local weather emissions or air air pollution. The one exhaust is water vapor.
The glossy blue prepare is the primary of its sort in North America. Referred to as a ZEMU, (zero-emissions a number of unit), it is going to quickly start carrying passengers between two cities east of Los Angeles, connecting commuters to different trains that journey to downtown L.A.
Another prepare traces are eliminating emissions by including overhead wires and utilizing electrical trains, like Caltrain’s new project in the Bay Area. However hydrogen trains don’t require any adjustments to tracks. “The fact is it may be used anyplace present rail occurs now,” says Tim Watkins, chief of legislative and public affairs on the San Bernardino County Transit Authority, the company behind the venture. “It doesn’t require a brand new capital funding into infrastructure.”
The trains, designed by the Swiss producer Stadler, use a hybrid hydrogen-battery system. Hydrogen gas cells cut up aside hydrogen molecules, producing vitality that costs onboard batteries, which then energy the prepare’s motors. The batteries additionally recharge when the prepare brakes. “It’s nice for us to have the ability to recuperate that vitality so we will make the effectivity of the prepare even increased, and the vary higher,” says Kaden Killpack, a industrial venture supervisor at Stadler U.S.
The prepare is at present working by its closing testing on native tracks. Metrolink, a regional prepare system, will start common service between the cities of Redlands and San Bernardino in early 2025. The prepare, with three passenger vehicles, is designed to be refueled as soon as a day. At first, the system will use common hydrogen, which is created from fossil fuels—so regardless that direct air pollution from the prepare will likely be eradicated, it is going to nonetheless have a carbon footprint. Inexperienced hydrogen, made with renewable vitality, “has a useful resource concern right here in Southern California,” says Watkins. “However we’ll migrate to inexperienced because the useful resource turns into extra out there.”
The truth that the prepare eliminates air pollution is very crucial in San Bernardino. The realm’s 10-lane freeways, rail yards, and different trade all contribute to unhealthy air high quality. The American Lung Affiliation gave the county an “F” grade in its 2024 State of the Air report. The county ranks worst within the nation for smog, with almost six months a 12 months of unhealthy air days throughout the examine interval from 2020 to 2022. (Wildfires, like the present Line Fire, are one other rising supply of air air pollution within the space. Reducing emissions may help keep away from a number of the worst results of local weather change, together with much more fires.)
The venture, backed by hundreds of thousands in funding from the state, will display a system that could possibly be replicated elsewhere. Electrical trains with overhead wires nonetheless make sense when potential, Killpack says, as a result of they’re environment friendly and don’t need to refuel. The trains themselves are easier, so there are fewer elements that may break. However in areas the place it’s arduous so as to add overhead wires—both as a result of a metropolis doesn’t just like the look of them, or as a result of freight firms that share the monitor resist it—hydrogen is another choice. “I believe it’s going to allow loads of locations to decarbonize with out having to make extraordinarily costly investments in infrastructure,” he says.