The San Francisco Bay Area’s public ferry service has placed a zero-emission passenger vessel into service for a six-month pilot program that could demonstrate the viability of hydrogen as a maritime fuel.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) placed the 70-foot Sea Change into service in San Francisco starting July 19, 2024. Operator Blue & Gold Fleet will run the 75-passenger aluminum catamaran, which is capable of 15 knots and 300 nautical miles before refueling. It is powered by hydrogen fuel cells that supply power to electric motors.
“We want our service to be a proving ground for technology so that we can demonstrate the latest and greatest, and if we find something that works really well, adopt it as a permanent part of our network,” Seamus Murphy, WETA’s executive director, told Professional Mariner.
Funding for the $14 million vessel came from numerous public and private sources, including Chevron New Energies, United Airlines, the California Air Resources Board and the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. Switch Maritime owns Sea Change and is leasing it to WETA.
All American Marine completed construction on Sea Change at its Bellingham, Wash., shipyard. Zero Emission Industries of San Francisco designed the integrated hydrogen fuel cell power system consisting of 12 Cummins fuel cells, each the size of a carry-on suitcase, that create electricity for motors supplied by BAE.
Sea Change arrived in San Francisco in March 2023, and the U.S. Coast Guard cleared it for service in May 2024.
WETA runs six regular weekday ferry routes around San Francisco Bay. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, its lines attracted 3.2 million passengers a year, and that number is rebounding as more workers return to the office. As part of the city’s climate action plan, the agency aims to replace half its fleet with zero-emission vessels by 2035. Most will run on electric power from batteries, which should be sufficient for most routes, Murphy said.
Hydrogen fuel cells, meanwhile, could be a solution on routes where batteries might not be feasible. “We think hydrogen has a lot of value and potential for covering the longest services that can’t be accommodated by battery-electric,” he said.
For the duration of a six-month pilot program, Sea Change will link Pier 41 near Fisherman’s Wharf on San Francisco’s northern waterfront with the Downtown SF Ferry Terminal, making four trips a day. The agency hopes to put it into long-term use following a successful initial trial.
Adapting to a hydrogen-powered vessel has presented a learning process for crews, said Murphy. “There are huge differences. The fueling process is totally different. Obviously, the bunkering process is totally different. … Safe to say it’s just a much more technical process to fuel.”
Liquid hydrogen, which emits little more than water vapor, has long been a promising fuel source for the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime industry. Hydrogen is particularly appealing because many diesel-powered vessels can be retrofitted to run on hydrogen, and the infrastructure used for fossil fuels can also be adapted for it.
In the early 2000s, German boat manufacturers built and launched the first ships powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Last year, MF Hydra, created and owned by the Norwegian company Norled, became the first hydrogen-powered ferry in service. The vessel, which can reach 8 knots, carries cars and passengers on a triangular route through a fjord on Norway’s southwestern coast.
But the use of hydrogen presents something of a catch-22: It is not yet available in most ports due to lack of demand, so limited supplies must be transported long distances, which generates greenhouse emissions and reduces or possibly eliminates the climate benefit of hydrogen fuel. Sea Change relies on hydrogen transported from Nevada.
Murphy said the purpose of employing Sea Change at this stage is less about reducing the agency’s carbon footprint immediately than demonstrating the viability of an intrinsically zero-emission fuel.
“We’re also doing this to incentivize the industry to evolve,” he said. “If we can demonstrate that this technology is viable in a maritime setting, then the industry will see that there’s a market for this kind of technology and the hydrogen suppliers will see that this is a potential market for their product.
“And hopefully,” he added, “that will encourage the production of more hydrogen supply because that really is the major hurdle right now for this technology.”