As Europe races ahead with hydrogen infrastructure for road freight, UK heavy goods vehicles risk being stranded. While the EU accelerates deployment of refuelling stations for heavy-duty vehicles, UK hauliers and infrastructure providers are warning that fragmented national policy and a lack of cross-border coordination are putting future hydrogen-powered HGVs at a competitive disadvantage.
At the heart of Europe’s push is the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), which came into law in 2023. It mandates member states to install publicly-accessible hydrogen refuelling stations every 200km along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) core routes and at every urban node by 2030.
These sites must cater for both heavy- and light-duty vehicles, creating a standardised, interoperable backbone across the continent. This framework provides clarity and momentum – exactly what the UK lacks. When hydrogen trucks roll off ferries at Calais, the refuelling infrastructure they need is ready and waiting. If they arrive at Dover, it’s a very different story.
Intelligent Energy, Bosch and Element 2 push forward, but need support
British hydrogen technology businesses like Intelligent Energy are working at pace to develop fuel cell systems for commercial vehicles such as the recently-debuted ICEBreaker hydrogen HGV, working in tandem with HORIBA MIRA and Viritech.
But don’t consider Intelligent Energy as a lone wolf in the business of fuel cells for trucks. Bosch, one of Europe’s largest automotive suppliers, is investing more than $2.5 billion in hydrogen technologies and is calling on UK and EU policymakers to act with urgency, warning that both regions risk falling behind China and India without coordinated investment and regulation.
Failure risks repeating the mistakes of the battery supply chain that has allowed China to take an imperious leadership position from rare earth mineral refinement to gigafactory cell and pack manufacturing to dominate the EV market. “We must act now to secure the UK’s industrial and transport sectors,” the UK managing director of Bosch Hydrogen Powertrain Solutions, has previously said.
In the UK, Element 2 is one of the few domestic firms pushing ahead with a national hydrogen refuelling network. Working with Exelby Services, the company is deploying high-capacity refuelling stations for HGVs along key motorway corridors – but it remains a solo effort in a space where policy alignment is critical.
Stakeholders such as Nick Shelley and James Harris have been actively engaging with infrastructure developers to accelerate deployment, but the scale of the challenge at hand is immense. “We’re laying the foundation, but interoperability with Europe is essential,” co-founder, Nick Shelley, said.
The UK has the parts, but who connects the dots?
The UK’s Department for Transport has acknowledged hydrogen’s potential in decarbonising HGVs, launching a £200 million zero-emission HGV and infrastructure demonstrator programme. This initiative aims to test both battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on UK roads, gathering data across a five-year period.
More recently in April, a cohort of 27 hydrogen projects across England, Scotland and Wales were shortlisted under the Second Hydrogen Allocation Round (HAR2), a major UK government initiative aimed at accelerating the production of low-carbon hydrogen.
The pieces are there, what’s missing is the plan to connect them – and to connect the UK to the rest of Europe.