Project Overview
In a previous project, funded through ERA’s Shovel Ready Challenge, Canadian Pacific Rail Kansas City Southern (CPKC) successfully demonstrated the world’s first freight hydrogen-powered locomotives using made-in-Alberta technology. This project was approved for funding through ERA’s Industrial Transformation Challenge in 2023 and expanded the technology’s application to additional locomotive types, as well as installed fixed-point refuelling infrastructure and a mobile refueler to enable more flexible liquid hydrogen refuelling at CPKC’s Taber and Lethbridge terminals.
Decarbonizing Alberta’s Locomotives with Hydrogen
Conventional North American freight locomotives use diesel generators to power electric traction motors, which dominate the freight rail sector. These are higher-emitting but more challenging to decarbonize than passenger rail due to heavier load limits and more challenging routes. Traditionally, freight locomotives are refurbished at the end of life, rather than bought new, and most locomotive platforms are many decades old. CPKC determined that to decarbonize freight rail, traditional diesel-electric systems can be replaced with hydrogen fuel cells, batteries, hydrogen storage cylinders, and modern power electronics. This allows for retrofit of existing diesel-electric locomotives into zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell battery electric locomotives.
The project converted two diesel-electric locomotives to operate with a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and batteries to generate power instead of conventional diesel engines and related components. Fuel cells produce energy by combining compressed hydrogen gas and atmospheric oxygen and creating an electrochemical reaction between these two elements within a stack of fuel cells. The electricity from the fuel cells charges onboard batteries to turn the existing electric traction motors, which were re-used from the original diesel-electric engines. Fuel cells require highly pure compressed hydrogen gas as a fuel source or feedstock, so CPCK purchased and installed hydrogen refuelling infrastructure in the form of on-site liquid storage, evaporation, compression and dispensing equipment. The refuelling facility stores liquid hydrogen supplied by Air Products, converting it to gas for dispensing and operation within the locomotives.
Deploying Hydrogen Fuel Cell Locomotives in Alberta
By project completion in 2025, CPKC successfully deployed two hydrogen fuel cell locomotives into their revenue service, where duty cycle analysis and in-service testing confirmed sufficient onboard hydrogen capacity, compatible operating characteristics, and reliability metrics within the range of conventional locomotives. The refinement of modular conversion kits, combined with partnerships that aligned locomotive modernization expertise with specialized hydrogen and fuel cell integration, significantly improved build quality and reduced commissioning timelines. These outcomes demonstrated that a retrofit-based approach can support both operational validity and a clearer path toward commercialization.
The project also revealed important technical and organizational challenges that informed key lessons. Fuel cell startup and shutdown faults, along with water generation and ingress affecting fuel cells and power electronics, required rapid fault detection, intensive data analysis and frequent software and design updates. The immediate visibility of faults in revenue service emphasized the need for robust exception handling and fast corrective action to maintain operator confidence. In parallel, the transition from a development-focused team to an operating organization highlighted the importance of field experience, extensive training, and dedicated support resources. Together, these experiences underscored that successful decarbonization in rail depends not only on technology performance but on disciplined learning cycles, strong partnerships, and sustained investment in people and processes.
In 2024, CPKC and Air Products signed an agreement for Air Products to supply hydrogen to CPKC hydrogen locomotives across Alberta using hydrogen from its new Net Zero Canadian Hydrogen Complex, also supported by ERA through the Government of Alberta. In September 2024, CPKC used hydrogen locomotives to pull a fully loaded coal train over the Rocky Mountains from Sparwood to Golden, BC, in one of the most challenging freight runs completed to date.
What’s next?
Moving forward, CPKC will build more production locomotives developed through the ERA projects. The kits to convert the locomotives are all produced in Alberta, while the modernization of the locomotives is performed in West Virginia. CPKC aims to develop 20 total locomotives and deploy them all for a one-year period. During that one-year period, CPKC will gather reliability data, and statistics will be used to validate industry metrics used to assess locomotive reliability, including Failures per Locomotive Year (FL/Y) and Mean-Time Between Failure (MTBF). These statistics will be used to justify further scale-up. During this process, CPKC will also make improvements to locomotive hardware and software.