Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Maritime Hydrogen topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Inland towboat operators say clean hydrogen faces major space, cost and refueling hurdles
Summary
A maritime industry representative told the Clean Hydrogen Task Force that limited deck space, higher capital and operating costs, and sparse hydrogen refueling options make converting inland towboats to green hydrogen technically possible but economically challenging. He urged small pilot projects and modular approaches for short-haul routes.
Roger Bodie Ann, a maritime industry representative from Morgan City who identified himself with the Chapel Eye Intercoastal Coalition and Marquis Management Group, told the Clean Hydrogen Task Force on Oct. 7 that inland towboats present special challenges for clean-hydrogen adoption.
“...it all comes down to cost efficiency and the cost of hydrogen,” Roger Bodie Ann said, summarizing the industry imperative that will determine whether hydrogen-powered towboats can compete with diesel. He told the task force inland vessels have very limited deck and storage space, making high-pressure or large-volume hydrogen storage difficult and reducing the distance a towboat could operate between refuelings compared with diesel.
Bodie Ann said the inland towing fleet — he cited an estimate of about 3,700 towboats on the Mississippi River and Intracoastal Waterway system — operates in a highly competitive, low-margin market in which operators bid day rates and typically must keep both capital and operating costs low. He said converting or building hydrogen-capable towboats could roughly double capital costs in his example: “if it’s $5,000,000 it’ll be $10,000,000.”
On technical approaches, Bodie Ann proposed starting with short-haul routes (for example New Orleans to Baton Rouge, roughly 100 miles) and experimenting with modular, removable hydrogen storage “modules” installed on deck or with midbody hull stretches to create more deck area. He suggested staging barges as floating refueling points rather than expecting hydrogen to be widely available at many ports.
Task force members pushed back with implementation questions and opportunities. Task force member Doctor Zappy suggested using the term “clean hydrogen” to allow staged deployment using lower-cost blue hydrogen initially, and pointed to commercially available liquid-hydrogen transport modules that could lower logistics costs. Chairman Orgeron and others noted federal grant programs (U.S. Department of Energy and MARAD were named in discussion) and university partnerships as possible sources of R&D funding to pilot concepts.
The presentation did not propose any formal regulatory changes or committee votes. Instead, presenters and task force members identified research-and-development pilots, modular storage systems and port- or barge-based refueling trials as near-term steps to test whether hydrogen can be economically viable for inland towing operations.
Ending: Bodie Ann urged a small-step, research-first approach: start with routes that need short range, test modular tanks and hybrid battery systems, and use university and federal R&D funding to reduce both capital and operating costs before wider fleet conversions.
