A fuel cell power boat was launched on 9 December to circling in the Amsterdam canals. The Nemo H2 which can transport up to 87 people, is a unique boat specially designed to run on a fuel cell engine, where hydrogen and oxygen combine to generate electricity and water, without creating carbon monoxide.
Tourists can now take a ‘CO2 Zero Canal Cruise’, for an additional 50 cents, which will fund additional research into carbon-cutting knowledge, added Freek Vermeulen, managing executive of Lovers Boat Company.
“That’s important in a city like Amsterdam with over 125 canal trips per day,” said Alexander Overdiep project manager.
If the innovative boat was twice as expensive to construct than a regular diesel canal boat, and has to break at a hydrogen dispensing station for a refill daily, while regular boats require a small amount of gas once a week, however, developers of the plan, which the Dutch government partly paid for, said expenses would decrease as more boats were built and tested, and if an additional hydrogen division infrastructure materialized.