By P Gosselin on 10. May 2026
Another sign that the “Green” Revolution is sinking Germany
The Energiewende (transition to green energy) is often hailed as the future of urban logistics, but a recent development in Bielefeld, Germany, serves as a sobering cautionary tale. The city has been forced to mothball its entire fleet of seven hydrogen-powered garbage trucks.
Idled garbage trucks. Illustration image only, generated by Grok AI.
Poor logistics
Blackout News reports that for years, Bielefeld’s hydrogen trucks relied on a refueling station in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. Even then, the logistics were strained; drivers had to make an 80-kilometer round trip just to fuel up. Given that these trucks have a daily range of about 300 kilometers, nearly a third of their energy was being spent just getting to the pump.
When the station in Rheda-Wiedenbrück closed, the situation turned from difficult to impossible. The next available station was in Münster—roughly 180 kilometers away for a round trip. At that distance, the trucks would consume most of their fuel just traveling to and from the station, leaving virtually no range left to actually collect trash.
Massive financial investment
The scale of idling the buses is significant. Each of the hydrogen-powered trucks cost approximately €1 million—four times the price of a conventional diesel garbage truck (roughly €250,000).
To bridge the cost gap, the German federal government provided massive subsidies, covering 90% of the additional costs. In total, nearly €5 million in taxpayer money was pumped into this fleet. Today, those high-tech vehicles are now idle, doing nothing, representing a massive waste of subsidized resources.
Bureaucratic absurdity
The most frustrating part of the story is that Bielefeld actually has a hydrogen refueling station within the city. One might think the solution is simple: just refuel the trucks at the local station! However, due to the strict terms of the government subsidies used to build that station, its use is contractually restricted to hydrogen buses only. Despite both the buses and the garbage trucks belonging to the municipal fleet, formal funding rules prevent the trucks from using the local pump.
Trend of hydrogen snafus
Bielefeld isn’t an isolated case. Similar issues have been reported in Duisburg and Lübeck, where hydrogen-powered municipal vehicles have been sidelined due to fuel shortages or infrastructure gaps. It highlights a recurring theme in the “Energiewende” (energy transition): technology is often deployed far ahead of the practical infrastructure needed to support it.
Summary
The case of Bielefeld’s idle garbage truck fleet is an example of bureaucracy’s rank inability to operate a society, serving as a reminder that “green” technology is a costly folly.
Original report in German at Blackout News here.
I suppose it would not be gentlemanly to refuel the dump trucks from the buses.
Here in the UK both Glasgow and Liverpool cancelled plans for hydrogen buses due to unreliable supply and the fact they were 6 times more expensive than electric buses which themselves were much more expensive than conventional buses.
Pfft. It’s only other people’s money.
The insanity continues.
Too late for change now in my life so I am reduced to cackling at folly, like those old guys in the Muppets.
Incidentally, a similar mileage thing to the German hydrogen garbage happens with British Telecom electric vans.
An engineer was working nearby so I asked him about his electric van. Supposedly a 180 mile range, but the weight of the equipment carried meant that was reduced to 120. As we were 40 miles from base he could only do one callout a day to be sure of getting back to base.
Another triumph for Net Zero.
Answer – just tell him to carry a petrol powered generator in the van as well.
problem solved..
Or accompany each and every garbage truck with an appropriately sized tow truck. Electric, of course.
That creates an endless chain of backup trucks
It’s backup trucks all the way down.
You would need a heavy duty diesel tow truck to rescue both, since the dead garbage truck or van wouldn’t get pulled very far by the electric tow truck before that was dead too.
I remember working on a coach bringing Dutch tourist from the Netherlands to Benidorm in Spain. They fill the tank (diesel) in Luxemburg drove to Benidorm and back to Luxemburg 3200 km and fill up again.
“creating jobs”
You forget that Bielefeld and the German gov ARE THE MUPPETS!
It appears to me that some bureaucrats in Bielefeld ought to be shot to bring in new ones who have better ideas to run the city.
The lack of punishment is the main reason why politicians and expert are continuing to do the wrong things.
But in this case they have been at least honest and told the plebs from the get go that those trucks are garbage.
And the money printing from the ECB . That’s also the inflation we see all over the place.
Combine this with the massive debt,
the Hormuz closure,
the massive burden to pay the invaders on top of an increase in spending as result of increased poverty and destruction of middle class,
less tax income and more and more expensive energy
+ hundreds of billions in additional spending for defense and Ukraine
while not having a Petro Dollar to redistribute the resulting inflation.
I wonder what may happen to Europe?
There’s a Dr. Sowell quote that I can’t quite remember, something about the stupidity of turning over control to someone who has no skin in the game.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
EU is massively subsidizing it. In my region our local bus transport just announced to start the biggest hydrogen bus fleet in Austria with 35 units running on hydrogen.
They were purchased for 40 mio € with a share of 30 mio € coming from EU subsidies.
Last week I had the “pleasure” to follow such a hydrogen bus with my car. Well… you need to switch on the windshield wipers. When the bus accelerates it’s like rain coming down. Will be interesting in winter, maybe we can use the as snow generators.
Here is the full story (in German, but translation tool should do the trick) https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3353119/
Well in winter they may cause huge problems if your observations are correct,
as the pollutant 🙂 may cause a massive increase of ice on streets,cars,windshields, wipers etc etc.
Gerald: how hilly is your region? Make sure you have a dashcam, might be able to get some YouTube ad revenue.
@SxyxS Yeah, I was also surprised about the amount of artifical rain. I think that’s the reason why they have the exhaust on the roof. If it would be at the bottom, you would leave a water trail (or ice in winter) on the road. But it will be still interesting to observe it in winter.
@Scarecrow
The region is mountainous and quite cold in winter. Lakes are even freezing to a level allowing ice skating on them in winter. The city is 500m (1500ft) above sea level.
Unfortunately due to European GDPR law, dashcams are hardly useable if you don’t want to risk high fines. Basically it’s only allowed to film nearest environment in case of an event justifying the filming. You have to make sure that you have no license plates or faces captured and the movie should not be saved, but continuously overwritten in a few minutes.
There will still be ice in the winter, the only difference will be that the ice will cover a larger area.
Now these trucks have failed in their original purpose of collecting garbage, they could always be used to make artificial snow for skiers.
That’s exactly what Gerald wrote in his post.
What a snide little person you are.
Technically, to run on hydrogen gas, an old fashioned spark plug ignition, and fairly large displacement low compression ratio engine (read mature tech) will run the truck on hydrogen. It seems like costs have run amuck to spend $3/4 million on each one for this relatively simple, equivalent-to-CNG-only-slightly-bigger-valves conversion. Those 3500 psi tanks for 1 day’s travel just don’t cost that much….Maybe the safety issues with hydrogen’s very low ignition energy and invisible flame until the surroundings turn molten….discouraged them….
Interesting link article. But in the included video, I couldn’t understand a word of what any of them said – of course being a native Texan may not help; however, us (at least older) Texans are overflowing with commonsense, so maybe Germany could use some exportation of our excess ‘Texas Good Old Boy’ to save them lots and lots of trouble and money. Borrowing Willis E. for a year or two would be a wise alternative for them too.
“Commonsense” and “Common Sense” have different meanings, like “Everyday” and “Every Day”.
“”Common sense” is generally used as two words when acting as a noun (e.g., “He has no common sense”), while “commonsense” is often used as a single word or hyphenated when used as an adjective before a noun (e.g., “a commonsense approach”). However, usage varies, and “common sense” is widely accepted in both contexts.”
Noun vs adjective versions of same meaning.
Texan’s usage would be incorrect, but the meaning of the words would not change.
If one usage is a noun, and the other is an adjective, then yes, the meaning of the words does change.
Maybe the exhaust pipes will freeze shut.
From your link:
Battery + hydrogen, what could go wrong?
Gives a whole new connotation to someone saying your vehicle is “Da Bomb,” doesn’t it? 😄😆😅
You heard of road “de-icers?” Well those buses are the road “re-icers.”
No problem, they can just have a “de-icer” truck follow each hydrogen bus.
Since the topic isn’t mentioned in the article, it seems likely to me that the source of the hydrogen for use in these vehicles is reformulated natural gas. This means that just as much CO2 is released in the air as would be if the vehicles were powered with petrol.
Apparently, they capture the carbon to make “blue” hydrogen. What a waste of humanity.
And put it someplace where it will leak out and kill many, undoubtedly, all in the pursuit of a non-solution to an imaginary problem. 🙄
That’s just as crazy as using hybrid motors where the ICE engine is only used to power the battery – and therefore a massive decrease in efficiency.
An uncle of mine had this idea long time ago and I smartassed that this can never happen – because of the inefficiency whenever a middleman is being used.
Or the biofuel nonsense, where fetelizers are used, then the processing and an increased emission in the end.
Well, it seems that no idea is to crazy as long as they can put enough lipstick on pig for virtue signalling and rip off.
Try telling that to Nissan:
The real question here is, who decided to buy electric trucks in the first place? The taxpayers, elected officials or city employees?
Not electric.
How about this:
“The real question here is, who decided to buy [insert stupid, worse-than-useless, non-alternative to diesel here] trucks in the first place? The taxpayers, elected officials or city employees?”
One size fits all.
Greentardization (n): The act or process of greentardizing: the widespread development of expensive, inefficient, unreliable, environmentally destructive, and even dangerous energy systems to replace perfectly good systems already in place, in order to “save the planet”, an idea so preposterous, so smug, and so idiotic as to be beyond belief.
I gather the hydrogen isn’t free either and is subsidized on an ongoing forever basis.
“Despite both the buses and the garbage trucks belonging to the municipal fleet, formal funding rules prevent the trucks from using the local pump.”
There is no problem so bad, that government involvement won’t make it worse.
Ordnung muß sein.
“”Ordnung muss sein” is a German proverb translating to “There must be order” or “Order is necessary”. It reflects a cultural ethos emphasizing discipline, structure, cleanliness, and organization, often applied to both personal life and public, societal norms.”
😄😆😅🤣😂
You really can’t even come up with fiction that’s funnier!
It’s like they’re trying to make The Babylon Bee irrelevant!
Print “WASSERSTOFFBUS” on the garbage trucks in huge big letters and refuel with the other buses
Question. Are these trucks actually powered by Hydrogen or is it really some other fuel? My understanding (and I am about as far from being an expert as you can be on this topic) is that producing hydrogen requires more energy than what it can provide given that hydrogen molecules must be separated from other molecules since they don’t exist independently in nature. Also, I thought there were issues with storage given that the molecules are so small that special storage and piping is required to reduce or eliminate leaks.
Yes, you are correct. Hydrogen has to be manufactured.
Yes, but so does petrol/gas and diesel. Less energy-consuming, though.
There is natural hydrogen.
Some think there is far more than is generally believed to be the case.
As a practical matter, it is all but nonexistent at present.
Good grief.
Idled garbage trucks. Illustration image only, generated by Grok AI.
Please, don’t do this.
This is a repost, so the guilty person may not see it. I saw the original and went looking for an actual photo. Search images for “bielefeld, german hydrogen garbage trucks”
The symbol on the side is baffling. I see 2 little and 1 large rain drops.
Another shoot – ready – aim. For the alarmists and activists solving a problem only means getting what they want. Collateral damage, cost, and inconvenience means nothing to them.
You just can’t get dumber than government no matter how hard you try.
Meanwhile in California where I live, the local family-run garbage collection company recently sold to a national garbage service and people are not too happy with the service.
The local company served the community for decades and took over a few even smaller companies when the owners retired. They lived here, they spent here.
A few years back came the mandate. The diesel-power garbage trucks that got replaced on a regular basis, each generation a bit cleaner, but, of course, at a higher cost just wasn’t good enough. The unfunded mandate from Sacramento was go electric or go out of business.
The last diesel trucks they purchased were over $100,000. The electric? $500,000. But wait, there’s more! California currently imports up to 60-70% of its electricity from not only out of state, but as far as Canada and Mexico and we can barely keep the lights on at times.
When the owners of our garbage company asked the local electrical supplier about purchasing the massive amount of power these new wundertrucks would need to keep charged? They were laughed away. There was neither enough power for this small business nor was there any infrastructure in place or a plan to massively upgrade the grid to power this one, small garbage company.
They sold it and are now retired. The new company generates complaints weekley over lack of service and rate increases.
Prices will soar for collection and people unable to afford that, too, will probably cancel their garbage collection and along our roads it will be tossed. Out on the back roads, piles will start and grow. Smart people will make sure their garbage has no identification leading back to them and the marginalized, minorities, and the poverty stricken will receive the blunt of it all.
I hope California voters this year will have a clue and start to turn the tide…
If hydrogen powered trucks was a good idea we would have been using them for years. It isn’t – so we haven’t.
Such is the madness that takes place when it’s OPM. (Other people’s money) Normal considerations are thrown to the wind when someone else is footing the bill.
No at that distance, they wouldn’t even make it back to their “garage,” they would run out of fuel on the return leg of the refueling trip without collecting any trash at all.
Plus, less energy will be produced burning the hydrogen “fuel” than was used to produce it. Hydrogen is an energy SINK, not an energy SOURCE.