Challenge
Several French and European cities have announced a ban on diesel vehicles for 2025 or 2030. The transport sector is responsible for more than 25% of the planet’s CO2 emissions. Fine particles (notably from combustion engines) cause the premature death of more than 50,000 people a year in France.
To meet these challenges, individual and collective transport and the road transport sector are currently undergoing a two-pronged revolution: electric for light vehicles and hydrogen for heavy vehicles.
Innovative Solution
Bouygues Energies & Services, an energy transition operator, offers turnkey solutions for the production/distribution of green hydrogen for transport.
These solutions include:
- A 100% renewable source of electricity (solar, hydroelectric or wind power) or via a “green PPA” (Power Purchase Agreement).
- An electrolyser to produce green hydrogen
- Hydrogen compression and storage
- A charging station (mono or bi-pressure) including the electronic payment system
In 2020, no less than 7 projects of this type have been studied by our teams, with the first projects scheduled for 2021.
Public Client Benefits
The aim is to make vehicle fleets carbon-free, such as those used for household waste collection or intercity buses.
This migration to hydrogen vehicles can also reduce noise pollution (end of internal combustion engines) and entirely eliminate polluting emissions (NOx, PM 10, SOx, etc.).
The hydrogen train (such as that developed by Alstom) can replace diesel trains running on non-electrified lines.
Private Client Benefits
The sector of forklift trucks used by logistics platforms is particularly suited from a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) standpoint compared to electric forklift trucks.
Hydrogen transport is also suitable for closed-loop road transport (returning to the same point every day)..
- A hydrogen transport solution can benefit from an abundance of uses by serving both public and private customers: mixed hydrogen station.

Key Figures
Reduced carbon impact: a hydrogen vehicle reduces CO2 emissions by almost two thirds compared with a diesel vehicle while maintaining exactly the same ease of use. Filling a tank full of hydrogen takes no longer than a tank full of diesel.
- Minimum station size: 1 MW i.e. about 400kg of hydrogen per day
- 400kg of hydrogen is enough to fill the tanks of 20 buses, for example
- It takes about 10 litres of water to produce 1 kg of hydrogen by electrolysis. This water is produced during the operation of hydrogen (fuel cell) vehicles, which only shed water when running
Maturity Level
Level 1 : Proof of Concept or lab test
Level 2: Tested under real life conditions
Level 3: Commercial solution