Romania’s Hydrogen Prepare Deal Reveals a Governance Failure, Not a Know-how Win

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Romania’s award of a contract for 12 hydrogen trains to Siemens Mobility seems to be, at first look, like a late however decided embrace of cleaner regional rail. Learn extra intently, it seems to be like one thing else. It seems to be like a governance failure made seen. The contract was awarded solely after repeated failed tenders, after the unique financing window underneath Romania’s Nationwide Restoration and Resilience Plan had successfully been misplaced, and after the authority needed to acknowledge that it was looking for a brand new funding supply. That’s not what profitable expertise choice seems to be like. It’s what institutional path dependence seems to be like when a public physique retains pushing a challenge ahead after the market, the schedule, and the financing have all signaled hassle.

The essential info are easy sufficient. Romania’s Railway Reform Authority, ARF, simply awarded Siemens a contract protecting 12 hydrogen gas cell trains with long-term upkeep, with reported contract values starting from about RON 1.6 billion to RON 2.5 billion (€314 million to €490 million) relying on upkeep length. Public summaries of the supposed service sample give attention to Bucharest-radiating non-electrified routes similar to Bucharest to Henri Coandă Airport, Bucharest to Târgoviște, Bucharest to Pitești, and Bucharest to Curtea de Argeș through Pitești, with some protection additionally mentioning westward extension towards Craiova. The procurement is being introduced as a solution to decarbonize regional rail with out the complete price of electrifying these traces. However the nation now not has the unique PNRR-backed funding lined up for the deal, and that issues as a result of financing self-discipline is a part of expertise self-discipline. A rustic that chooses a expertise cleanly doesn’t normally lose the cash, rerun the tender a number of instances, after which award the contract whereas nonetheless looking for substitute financing.

The year-by-year historical past makes the purpose higher than any summary critique. In 2021, the thought of hydrogen trains entered Romania’s coverage dialog as a promising fashionable possibility for cleaner rail. In 2022, ARF launched market session for hydrogen electrical a number of models, which is a traditional early step in a procurement pipeline. In April 2023, ARF signed the PNRR financing contract for the acquisition of 12 hydrogen models. However in the identical common interval, the primary formal tender failed as a result of no bids have been submitted. Romania relaunched the tender and acquired just one bid, from the Alstom and Linde Gaz Romania affiliation, and that second process was cancelled in November 2023 as a result of the only real provide was non-compliant. ARF relaunched once more in December 2023. The third try collapsed in Might 2024 after no bids have been submitted. By August 2024, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu was publicly saying Romania would abandon the acquisition of hydrogen trains by means of the PNRR and redirect the cash to highways, with some reporting quoting him saying, “As a result of there aren’t any hydrogen trains.” But in December 2024 the authority launched a fourth tender. In April 2025 Siemens submitted the primary eligible bid. In April 2026 Siemens received the tender, after the unique financing window had been missed and ARF needed to say it was looking for a brand new supply of cash. That’s not one procurement bump. It’s a multi-year institutional battle with repeated warning indicators.

These repeated failures should not background noise. They’re the market talking. Public procurement is a market check. If a authorities places a well-designed, financeable, operationally credible challenge into the sphere, suppliers normally present up. They might compete exhausting, or they could not, however they present up. Romania ran this hydrogen prepare check 4 instances. Twice it obtained no bids. As soon as it obtained a non-compliant bid. Solely on the fourth spherical did it get a single viable bidder. That form of market habits normally factors to a bundle of issues fairly than one remoted problem. The expertise might look dangerous. The danger allocation might look unattractive. The timeline might look unrealistic. The related fueling and infrastructure plan might look underdefined. The industrial upside might look too small for the complexity concerned. Regardless of the combine, the sign is identical. The provider base didn’t see this as an inviting mainstream procurement. Romania didn’t uncover a wholesome hydrogen rail market. It continued till one provider was keen to take the deal.

One of many clearest indicators that Romania is shopping for right into a shrinking area of interest fairly than a rising market is the retreat of the businesses most visibly related to hydrogen rail. Cummins, whose gas cells powered Alstom’s flagship Coradia iLint fleets, offered its rail-dedicated hydrogen gas cell actions to Alstom in April 2026, and Alstom didn’t current the deal as a progress push right into a booming phase. It described the acquisition in operational phrases, targeted on supporting the put in fleet and concluding contracted packages. That’s the language of consolidation and managed follow-through, not growth. Cummins itself was as soon as promoted as a key enabling provider for hydrogen rail, together with Decrease Saxony’s 14-train fleet, so its exit from rail-dedicated gas cell actions issues. It means that after years of trials, subsidies, and demonstration worth, hydrogen trains nonetheless didn’t create the dimensions, margins, or confidence wanted to maintain a broader provider ecosystem. Romania’s award comes on the level the place one main provider has stepped again and the primary prepare producer is folding the remaining capabilities inward to help present obligations, which is a poor backdrop for claiming that hydrogen rail has entered a sturdy industrial part.

That’s the reason the governance body issues greater than the expertise body. Romania isn’t revealing confidence in hydrogen. It’s revealing what occurs when public establishments turn into dedicated to a framing and proceed after the proof has weakened. As soon as a challenge acquires strategic language, coverage sponsorship, funds line objects, and bureaucratic labor, it turns into exhausting to step again and reopen first-order questions. The establishment has already spent years organizing round one reply. At that time, abandoning the reply seems like failure in a manner that redesigning the issue from scratch doesn’t. Bureaucracies, like firms, are susceptible to sunk price habits. The tougher and longer the procurement turns into, the extra possible decision-makers are to interpret persistence as prudence as an alternative of asking whether or not persistence itself has turn into the error. Romania’s hydrogen prepare award has that sample throughout it.

The deeper techniques drawback is that this was by no means only a prepare buy. It was an infrastructure resolution disguised as a rolling inventory resolution. Hydrogen is politically interesting as a result of it seems to be like a solution to decarbonize rail with out making a tough infrastructure selection. Overhead wiring requires hall planning, grid connection work, approvals, development home windows, capital self-discipline, and coordination with the infrastructure supervisor. Battery-electric rail requires selective wiring, charging technique, timetable adjustment, and system planning. Hydrogen lets a ministry inform itself that it may well keep away from these selections by shopping for a extra advanced prepare. However that doesn’t make the infrastructure drawback go away. It simply strikes it sideways into gas manufacturing, storage, compression, refueling logistics, upkeep complexity, and long-term provide threat. Hydrogen isn’t an escape from infrastructure. It’s a totally different and sometimes extra fragile infrastructure wager. The attraction is political as a result of the property are much less seen alongside the road. The prices and dangers are nonetheless there.

That is the place the German proof issues. Baden-Württemberg and Decrease Saxony didn’t method rail decarbonization as a branding train. They studied and, in Decrease Saxony’s case, operated the choices. The VDE research on alternate options to diesel a number of models concluded that gas cell trains have been the least economical possibility in all modeled circumstances. It pointed to hydrogen price above €5 per kg, shorter life for fuel-cell-related parts, and the added price of hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Baden-Württemberg’s subsequent work by means of the NVBW SteFaNS research advisable battery-hybrid trains for a number of subnetworks due to clear price benefits. Press reporting on the state’s findings summarized the outcome much more sharply, with hydrogen trains described as as much as 80% dearer over their lifetime than electrical alternate options. Germany didn’t conclude that hydrogen had no use wherever. It concluded that wires made sense the place justified, batteries plus selective wiring made sense throughout many regional networks, and hydrogen was a slender residual area of interest carrying a value premium.

Decrease Saxony is much more instructive as a result of it moved past modeling into operation. Its hydrogen deployment round Bremervörde, utilizing Alstom iLint trains, was the showcase challenge for each day passenger hydrogen rail service. Greater than €85 million went into the trains, federal help was added, and the entire level was to show that hydrogen trains might substitute diesel on an actual community. However the lesson Decrease Saxony seems to have drawn was to not scale hydrogen outward. In March 2024 the state introduced help for 70 battery-electric trains, together with 40 for LNVG, as a part of the subsequent stage of diesel substitute. Reporting on the state’s decision-making signifies that batteries and electrification received on price grounds for the remaining networks. In the meantime the flagship hydrogen fleet itself bumped into reliability and provide points. Trade reporting described issues acquiring hydrogen reliably, service substitutions with diesel and buses, and later shortages of fuel-cell substitute modules that lower prepare availability sharply. At current solely 4 of 14 trains are working. Decrease Saxony was the strongest European check of hydrogen rail. It become an argument for batteries.

Romania’s selection, then, isn’t merely a nationwide experiment. It’s a late transfer right into a phase that its strongest European exemplars are already shifting away from. That issues as a result of some expertise selections deserve endurance whereas the sphere matures. Others deserve skepticism when the sphere matures in the other way. Hydrogen rail now seems to be extra just like the second case. The European sample isn’t one in every of accelerating adoption based mostly on subject success. It’s one in every of narrowing use circumstances, rising scrutiny, and larger choice for batteries plus wires. Romania isn’t stepping confidently right into a rising mainstream. It’s shopping for right into a residual area of interest for the time being the area of interest is being reclassified.

The economics of the Romanian contracts for electrical vs hydrogen trains reinforce that time. The Alstom electrical prepare contract for 37 electrical a number of models plus 15 years of upkeep was reported at about RON 2.422 billion excluding VAT, or roughly €486 million. The Siemens hydrogen contract is reported round €325 million for 12 trains plus the same time period of upkeep. On a crude per-trainset foundation, the electrical trains come out at round €13.1 million every, whereas the hydrogen trains are round €27.1 million every. That’s greater than double per trainset. It’s not an ideal apples-to-apples comparability as a result of the electrical trains run on electrified traces and the hydrogen trains are meant for non-electrified routes. However the comparability nonetheless tells readers one thing essential. Hydrogen rolling inventory is pricey earlier than anyone asks the place the hydrogen will come from.

That caveat about line electrification is essential, as a result of the actual comparability isn’t hydrogen versus typical electrical trains on already wired corridors. The actual comparability is hydrogen versus batteries plus selective wiring and charging technique on the focused non-electrified corridors. The Romanian route record doesn’t clearly fall exterior that call body. Bucharest to Henri Coandă Airport is about 19 km. Bucharest to Târgoviște is round 75 to 80 km. Bucharest to Pitești is about 108 km. Bucharest to Curtea de Argeș through Pitești is on the order of 140 km. These should not all trivial distances, however they’re very a lot throughout the vary band that European research have examined when deciding between batteries, selective electrification, and hydrogen. Siemens and Alstom already provide 120 km vary electrical prepare units. That is precisely the terrain the place Germany’s proof base grew to become skeptical of hydrogen and supportive of battery-hybrid options with focused overhead line funding. Romania didn’t decide hydrogen on some uniquely lengthy, remoted desert railway. It picked hydrogen on routes that appear to be the kind of routes that make the battery-plus-wires query unavoidable.

The operational query that Romania has not answered clearly is the place the hydrogen comes from. Early procurement reporting indicated that the challenge included related hydrogen provide and fueling services, and the 2023 Alstom bid paired Alstom with Linde Gaz Romania, which strongly steered that gas and fueling infrastructure have been a part of the package deal. However public summaries of the 2026 Siemens contract give attention to the trains and upkeep, not on a clearly recognized hydrogen provide plan. I used to be not capable of confirm authoritative public documentation stating whether or not the supposed hydrogen can be inexperienced, blue, grey, or in any other case, or whether or not the present contract consists of gas provide or leaves it to a separate association. That silence issues. Hydrogen rail is commonly mentioned as if the gas molecule will merely seem on schedule, on the proper purity, in the precise stress regime, on the proper value, each day for many years. That’s not how infrastructure works. If gas sourcing isn’t plain within the public report, then the challenge is carrying unresolved operational threat.

Romania’s broader hydrogen panorama doesn’t make the reply less complicated. The nation has some inexperienced hydrogen tasks and ambitions, however not a big mature pipeline by European requirements. OMV Petrom is growing a 20 MW inexperienced hydrogen challenge at Petrobrazi and has described associated work tied to lower-carbon fuels. Rompetrol has described a partner-seeking inexperienced hydrogen idea tied to the Petromidia refinery. Romania’s technique paperwork and summaries discuss targets for electrolyzer capability by 2030 and help underneath the NRRP. However that’s not the identical factor as having a deep bench of working inexperienced hydrogen provide out there to help a rail system with each day service obligations. On the similar time, a lot of Romania’s present industrial hydrogen nonetheless comes from typical steam methane reforming. Which means the simple rhetorical transfer, “the trains will run on inexperienced hydrogen,” can’t be taken without any consideration. It wants an precise challenge, value, and supply chain behind it.

Throughout Europe, hydrogen sourcing has repeatedly turned out to be the hidden fragility in hydrogen transport tasks, not only for trains however for buses and ferries as properly. In Decrease Saxony’s flagship hydrogen rail community, Linde’s technical issues with hydrogen provide contributed to coach cancellations and substitutions with diesel models and buses in 2024, whereas later fleet availability issues compounded the operational pressure. In Polish bus fleets, Poznań quickly withdrew its hydrogen buses after onboard diagnostics flagged faults that experiences linked to issues over hydrogen high quality. In ferries, lots of the better-known European hydrogen vessel tasks are nonetheless on the demonstration or first-of-a-kind stage, which is one other manner of claiming the gas chain has not matured right into a routine, bankable working enter in the best way marine diesel, shore energy, and even LNG have. The sample isn’t that Europe lacks hydrogen bulletins. It’s that getting the precise hydrogen, on the proper purity and stress, in the precise place, each day, at an appropriate price, stays exhausting sufficient that the gas provide itself retains turning into a service threat.

How a lot hydrogen are we speaking about? Not an industrial cluster quantity, however not a trivial demonstration quantity both. Siemens says a two-car Mireo Plus H can attain as much as 1,200 km vary, and reporting across the platform signifies about 180 kg of hydrogen per fill. That suggests a tough planning consumption of round 0.15 kg of hydrogen per km. Utilizing present broad service ranges on the named Bucharest-centered corridors as a proxy, the possible fleet demand lands round 0.8 to 1.0 tons of hydrogen per day. The airport shuttle alone may need round 180 to 205 kg per day. Bucharest to Pitești may need round 345 to 389 kg per day. Bucharest to Târgoviște may need round 192 to 216 kg per day. Curtea de Argeș at sparse service might add round 114 to 129 kg per day. Add these collectively and the system lands within the neighborhood of a ton per day. The quantity is approximate as a result of ARF has not printed a full working diagram tied to the hydrogen fleet, however it’s massive sufficient to show “the place will the hydrogen come from” from a rhetorical query into an operational one.

If Romania wished to cowl that demand with electrolysis, the dimensions of the electrolyzer isn’t huge. At 50 to 55 kWh per kg of hydrogen, 800 to 1,000 kg per day interprets into roughly 1.7 to 2.3 MW of steady electrolyzer load. An actual challenge would possible need extra like 2.5 to three MW put in as soon as compression, storage, downtime, and working margin are thought-about. That’s sufficiently small to point out that the rail challenge isn’t some large hydrogen economic system anchor. However it is usually massive sufficient to require an actual asset, an actual connection, an actual siting course of, and actual economics. It’s not nothing. And that creates a query that goes to the center of the governance critique. If the required hydrogen manufacturing is simply within the low single-digit megawatt vary, why purchase a extremely specialised hydrogen fleet in any respect as an alternative of shopping for battery trains and fixing the hall drawback extra straight with selective wiring and charging. A small electrolyzer requirement doesn’t rescue the hydrogen case. It makes the choice look much more atypical and accessible.

One operational level in hydrogen’s favor is that the at the moment named routes are principally Bucharest-centered, so a single Bucharest-area fueling facility seems believable for the preliminary community. Given the prepare’s marketed vary, a number of each day spherical journeys may very well be accomplished earlier than returning to a typical refueling location. However that could be a restricted consolation. A single-facility association nonetheless requires reliable gas provide, compression, storage, upkeep, backup plans, and operational resilience. If the community later extends westward towards Craiova, the neatness of a one-depot story declines. I used to be not capable of finding authoritative public affirmation of a ultimate depot and refueling plan, so even this comparatively favorable assumption sits within the class of believable fairly than confirmed. That once more is a part of the story. The additional one seems to be into the challenge, the extra one finds broad claims and fewer concrete solutions.

The local weather case turns into even much less comfy if inexperienced hydrogen doesn’t materialize and the trains run on grey hydrogen as an alternative. Utilizing the Siemens consumption estimate of roughly 0.15 kg H2 per km, and utilizing the IEA’s estimate that grey hydrogen from unabated pure fuel carries round 10 to 12 kg CO2e per kg of hydrogen, the local weather efficiency is now not remotely “zero emission.” Add hydrogen leakage to the calculation and the image worsens. Latest literature locations hydrogen’s oblique warming impression round GWP20 of roughly 37 and GWP100 of roughly 11, and leakage evaluations point out that actual supply-chain leakage charges generally is a few % fairly than trivial fractions. Beneath affordable assumptions, grey hydrogen rail lands round 1.5 to 2.0 kg CO2e per train-km. A comparable two-car diesel regional prepare, utilizing Nice Britain’s diesel passenger traction averages as a proxy, lands round 2.7 kg CO2 per train-km from combustion alone and round 3.2 kg CO2e per train-km with a modest upstream allowance. Which means grey hydrogen might be considerably higher than diesel on a fuel-cycle foundation, however solely by a middling margin, and the benefit shrinks when leakage is counted, particularly over a 20-year horizon. Grey hydrogen rail isn’t decarbonization. It’s partial enchancment wearing zero-emission language.

At fleet scale, the local weather arithmetic sharpens the purpose. For a Romanian hydrogen fleet burning round 0.8 to 1.0 tons of hydrogen per day, grey hydrogen would suggest one thing like 8 to 14 tons of CO2e per day relying on hydrogen carbon depth, leakage, and whether or not one makes use of GWP20 or GWP100. A comparable diesel service can be increased, however not a lot increased that one might actually hold calling the hydrogen trains “clear” with out qualification. As soon as the gas pathway stops being an abstraction and begins being an actual procurement and logistics query, the rhetorical hole between the picture of hydrogen rail and the possible actuality turns into tougher to disregard. That doesn’t imply the challenge will essentially run on grey hydrogen. It means the governance failure consists of placing a public decarbonization story on the desk with out making the gas pathway plain sufficient to check.

One other uncomfortable piece of this story is that Romania’s contract award seems to have survived the lack of the unique funding partially as a result of the tender paperwork had already anticipated financing uncertainty. Reporting on the December 2024 relaunch mentioned the authority reserved the precise to cancel if the financing contract was not signed or if state funds funds couldn’t be accepted. In different phrases, the procurement structure itself acknowledged that cash may not be there. That doesn’t make the award illegal or irrational by itself. It does underline that the nation has been working for a while inside a framework the place financing instability was not a shock. Good governance would usually deal with that as a purpose to reopen the core resolution. As a substitute, Romania seems to have handled it as a purpose to maintain the procedural equipment shifting whereas hoping the financing may very well be reconstructed across the challenge later.

That brings the story again to the central prognosis. Romania isn’t shopping for a expertise. It’s revealing a governance failure. The failure isn’t that the nation needs cleaner rail. That ambition is sound. The failure isn’t even that Romania explored hydrogen. Many international locations did. The failure is that after years of failed tenders, lack of the unique financing window, weak provider urge for food, unsure gas sourcing, and a rising European proof base pointing towards batteries plus wires, the institutional response was to maintain pushing the hydrogen challenge ahead fairly than step again and reframe the query. Romania didn’t arrive at hydrogen as a result of the proof grew to become compelling. It arrived at hydrogen as a result of the paperwork stayed dedicated after the proof weakened.

With the contingent nature of the contract, the excessive expense, the clear success of electrical trains and the dearth of any obvious inexperienced hydrogen, I solely give the chances of the contract truly being exercised and trains being delivered a 30% likelihood. And if they’re delivered and put into operation, it’s solely 5% possible that they might nonetheless be working after ten years. Globally, hydrogen transit fleets are far more notable for being deserted than perpetuated.

That’s the reason this case issues past 12 trains. It’s a research in how governments purchase the unsuitable complexity for the unsuitable causes. They outline the issue too narrowly as a car procurement. They separate rolling inventory from infrastructure technique. They overvalue symbolic innovation. They underweight market alerts when tenders fail. They deal with financing slippage as a procedural headache fairly than a warning that the challenge idea itself wants evaluation. They let a modern-sounding reply displace a disciplined system comparability. As soon as that sequence is underway, the ultimate award can appear to be progress even when it’s actually the residue of an earlier resolution that was by no means correctly reexamined. Romania’s hydrogen prepare deal isn’t essential as a result of it is going to rework European rail. It is crucial as a result of it exhibits how public establishments hold turning decarbonization right into a branding train when the tougher, extra helpful work is infrastructure planning, possibility comparability, and governance that’s keen to alter course when the proof modifications.