Hamburg’s 2030 challenge
Posted: January 15, 2010 by Denny, Category:Sustainability
Most large cities suffer from air pollution in winter as well as in summer time. Increasing prices for fossil fuels makes people looking for alternatives. Hamburg, as the second largest city in Germany, is moving forward and developed a strategy to base it’s entire public transport on electricity. While current train systems already run on electricity, they’re aiming to have all diesel engine buses replaced by hydrogen powered hybrid buses. For several years six hydrogen powered buses of the first generation are running on a day to day basis already and have proven their reliability. In a partnership with Daimler / Mercedes-Benz the next generation of Citaro FuelCell-Hybrid bus made it’s debut in Hamburg Nov 2009. 10 of them will start it’s service in 2010. The new buses will cut fuel consumption by approx. 50%. This advancement became possible through improvement of fuel cell technology and the use of recuperation through it’s wheel hub engines. According to Mr. Elste, director of Hamburg Hochbahn, is the long term goal in Hamburg to have all public transport running on electricity. To achieve that, current buses will be replaced step by step every year by clean, zero carbon technology.
