
Toyota and CP Group collaborate on farm waste hydrogen fuel project
December 20, 2022The project will provide fuel for hydrogen-powered cars.
The Japanese automaker Toyota Motors and Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group recently announced that they will be teaming up on a hydrogen fuel project that will turn farm waste into fuel for hydrogen vehicles.
Toyota is working on expanding its presence in Thailand.
The companies intend to work together on multiple projects. One of these will be a hydrogen fuel project that will use biogas from farm waste to produce H2. The hydrogen that is produced will be used by fuel cells in new delivery trucks that CP plans to introduce into its fleet to lower its CO2 emissions.
True Leasing (a company in charge of CP’s transportation service business) as well as other Japanese automakers like Isuzu Motors and Toyota subsidiary Hino Motors (which Toyota says provides most of CP’s transportation) are also participating in the partnership.
“The project is about thinking what we can all do to lower CO2 emissions in Thailand’s transport sector,” said Toyota CEO, Akio Toyoda.
The Thai-based hydrogen fuel project is important to Toyota.
The automaker wants to show that more than electric vehicles (EVs) can cut emissions and that it’s important to develop a wide range of alternative energy vehicles to allow for different roads to reduce emissions. That said, not everyone shares the same opinion. Some investors have criticized Toyota’s stance, feeling that it slows the adoption of EVs and hinders efforts to fight climate change.
Toyota’s rivals, including Tesla and BYD, are pushing for a rapid shift to EVs in Thailand. However, Akio Toyoda warned against restricting alternative fuel options to achieve carbon neutrality.
“Now is the time to broaden the range of options. It is necessary for Thai users to have more options when it comes to carbon neutrality,” Toyoda said, adding that while electric vehicles are an important decarbonization option, they are not the only option.
According to Toyoda, the Thai hydrogen fuel project will be a test of what happens when the range of alternative fuel options is expanded.
Toyota and CP also intend to study ways to improve the efficiency of logistics by using connectivity technology. Like Toyota, CP shares the same carbon neutrality ambitions.
HYDROGEN POLL: Cost and infrastructure aside, are you ready to use hydrogen as a source of fuel for home heating?[forminator_poll id=”56493″]
This is one of the first articles I’ve read about using Renewable Natural Gas to directly produce hydrogen. Because is it using a renewable fuel, it is Green Hydrogen. Most Green Hydrogen articles push the use of hydrolysis of water using Renewable Electricity as the source of the hydrogen. There is no country in the world that has the potential to meet all of its electricity needs using strictly Renewable Electricity produced by wind, solar, hydro power. 60% of present electricity needs comes from fossil fuel electric plants. This doesn’t even include the electricity that would be needed for transportation and Electric Vehicles. RNG can be used in existing Internal Combustion Engines directly, or be converted to Green Hydrogen to power Electric Fuel Cell vehicles. The “source product” for RNG is organic waste. After capture of the biogas to produce RNG, the remaining organic waste can be used for organic fertilizer. Every molecule of methane that is captured from biogas and processed to RNG is one less molecule of methane released to the atmosphere as a Green House Gas. RNG production is the logical source of a fully renewable hydrocarbon to replace present fossil desel fuel and fossil natural gas.