37 new H2 refuelling stations built in Europe in 2023

This is the result of the 16th annual analysis by H2stations.org, an information service from Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik (LBST). According to H2stations.org, 40 countries now have a hydrogen refuelling infrastructure in operation or under construction.

At the end of 2023, 921 hydrogen refuelling stations were in operation worldwide. However, this infrastructure is extremely unevenly distributed: It is mainly concentrated in East Asia with China, Japan and South Korea, Central Europe and the east and west coasts of the USA. Outside of these regions, H2 refuelling stations can only be found very sporadically.

According to the analysis, there were 265 hydrogen refuelling stations in Europe at the end of 2023, most of them – 105 to be precise – in Germany. This is followed by France (51), the Netherlands (22) and Switzerland with 17 refuelling stations. H2stations.org also points to the fact that the focus of fuel cell passenger cars has shifted to commercial vehicles. “While around 70 per cent of new filling stations in 2019 were only built for refuelling passenger cars, this was the exception in 2023. 92 per cent of the new hydrogen filling stations opened in 2023 are designed for refuelling passenger cars and heavy commercial vehicles such as buses or trucks,” the press release states.

This has also led to considerable construction activity in Germany, even if this is not directly reflected in the total number: in 2023, only eight new stations were opened in Germany, but 28 existing locations with 700-bar connections for cars only were retrofitted for refuelling heavy commercial vehicles at 350 bar.

Internationally, however, Germany is well behind the three key countries in East Asia with 105 refuelling stations: 166 hydrogen refuelling stations were in operation in Japan at the end of 2023. In South Korea, vehicles can be refuelled at 174 locations. However, the most hydrogen refuelling stations are (presumably) in China, where H2stations.org lists 197 locations, “although the difficulty of accessing information limits the reliability of the data”. In addition, many completed filling stations there are not yet in operation due to a lack of regional operating licences.

In North America, the growth in the previous year was manageable, with only seven new refuelling stations being opened, bringing the total number of sites there to 100 – eight of which are in Canada and 92 in the USA. But even within the USA, hydrogen-electric transport is primarily possible in one region without any problems: 75 of the 92 refuelling stations are located in California.

Source: Info via email, h2stations.org