Denmark: all hydrogen stations closed

A big blow for those who cannot wait until Europe has a watertight hydrogen network: in Denmark it has been decided to close all existing hydrogen filling stations.

Although the technology is still in its infancy, the overall trend is for the number of hydrogen stations to expand. After all, if it won’t work for passenger cars, then it will work for trucks and other big commercial guys. However? The Danish hydrogen station operator Everfuel no longer believes in this for the time being. It closes all three hydrogen stations in Denmark, reports Energywatch. Everfuel has owned those stations – reportedly all of Denmark’s hydrogen stations – since 2020, when the company acquired them from another party. Everfuel’s plan was promising: there should be a total of 19 hydrogen stations in Denmark by the end of 2023. Not only will this not happen, the existing stations will also be closed.

Everfuel is still keeping the door open to work with customers and partners to find a way in which the stations can still remain open, but it no longer wants to pump money into it. That has already happened enough: Everfuel is said to have lost 10.9 million euros on the operation of the gas stations in the first half of 2023 alone.

Everfuel CEO Jacob Korgsgaard also sees that the battery-electric solution will win the battle in the passenger car market, but at the same time thinks that the limitations of the energy grid could be a reason for a revival of hydrogen. Everfuel will continue to produce hydrogen and will use it for other applications for the time being.

“The production of hydrogen, tanker trucks and filling stations are not as mature as we had hoped when we announced our ambitions,” Krogsgaard told Energywatch. He adds another important disadvantage: it remains quiet from car manufacturers. Toyota offers the Mirai and Hyundai still has the Nexo, but otherwise it remains with reluctant ‘trial balloons’ such as the BMW iX5 Hydrogen. We read that there are now a total of 136 hydrogen cars on the road in Denmark, of which only ten are privately owned. “That makes it difficult to arrive at a good business model for the hydrogen stations,” explains Krogsgaard, who owns one of those ten cars. A classic chicken and egg story, or in this case neither.