Hydrogen Hits the Roads

On the occasion of the World Hydrogen Energy Conference (WHEC) 2010 in Essen the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy (IPHE) is organizing  “IPHE Global School Student Competition”. The objective of the competition is to increase young people’s awareness, enthusiasm and knowledge of H2 & FC. The best contribution will be awarded at the WHEC 2010 in Essen. For more information please contact: Prof. Juerchen Garche (jugarche@aol.com) or Dr. Thomas Kattenstein (kattenstein@energieagentur.nrw.de). The registration form you find below. For more information on the IPHE please vist the IPHE website.

The United States Federal Transit Administration has released a report which reviews more than 20 hydrogen bus trials and demonstrations which operated worldwide between 2002 and 2007.  The trials were in the US, Europe, China, Japan and Australia.  Both internal combustion and fuel cell powered buses were trialled, as well as various fuelling and associated technologies. The resulting report analyses lessons learnt from the demonstrations, identifies key remaining challenges for introduction of the technology, and suggests potential roles for government in supporting commercialisation of fuel cell buses. The report can be downloaded here

The EHA will be present at the 15th Group Exhibit Hydrogen + Fuel Cells at HANNOVER MESSE 2009 – 20-24 April  2009. Together with the EHA’s Spanish, Italian and Belgian national association members, AEH2, H2IT and VSWB,   the EHA booth will feature information on how hydrogen is extending the range of electric transport, renewable energy and smart grids.  On April 23 the EHA Board will be holding its meeting at the Group Exhibit. For more info please click here

The EU Parliament adopted on March 24 for a resolution calling on the European Commission to ensure “the best use of European funds available in support of jobs” to train and retrain workers in the car industry. It states that governments should provide the industry with faster and simpler access to financial aid by guaranteeing low-interest loans as demand droppoed 30.9% last January . The resolution urges Member States to increase the lending capacity of the European Investment Bank (EIB), in particular to provide funding for SMEs. Françoise Le Bail, deputy director-general of DG Enterprise department said that the EIB had not been quick enough to release funding in the past, but that banks were now in a better position to do so. MEPs were also promoted the role of green technologies in creating new jobs, driven particularly by the EU’s new climate legislation agreed in December. They requested the Commission to draw up guidelines for scrapping schemes and other incentives that encourage coordinated fleet renewal. The EHA is following the development of the Commission’s proposal on the EU Green Cars Initiative that is included in the Economic Recovery Plan that was published last November .

On 24 March 2009, Daimler, Shell, TOTAL, Vattenfall Europe, and hySOLUTIONS signed an agreement with the City of Hamburg to build a low-emission fleet of vehicles and the accompanying infrastructure, including hydrogen fuelling stations. From 2010  a total of ten Daimler fuel cell buses of the latest generation will be operating in Hamburg in service and another 20 Mercedes B Class will be added. The cooperation with Shell and Total will inlcude  the developmennt of an extra four hydrogen refuelling stations with 700 bar refilling capacity. Vattenfall will increase its capacity to produce hydrogen for renewable sources. Last but not least a fuel cell test facility will be founded to test fuel cells for aircraft applications by Airbus, EADS and DLR with the support of the City of Hamburg.

Recently funding levels for clean technologies seem to increase  by an addtional three 0′s, the talk is billions: €6 billion for the EU Green Cars Initiative, an extra €8 bln for regional projects on energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in the EU Cohesion funds that will be  extended to all EU Member States,  €5 bln for CCS, wind and smart grid development. Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies have links to all of these topics, extending the range of electric transport applications and making the most efficient  use of primary energy, both conventional and renewable. Informing key decision makers of the important efforts of European industry and research  in developing  commercial hydrogen and fuel cell systems and the need for focussed EU policy support in the next coming years will be crucial to ensure that some if these stimulus zero’s will be spent in our sector.  The EHA, together with its industry and national association members and through its support of HyER (formerly HyRaMP),  the regional partnership for hydrogen and fuel cells, is committed to continue play an important role to influence this political process.

The Council of the EU’s leaders on March 19 – 20, 2009,  approved six Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects  as part of the EU Economic Recovery Plan, that will use pre- combustion technology, allowing the production of hydrogen as a by product.  The projects approved are located in Rotterdam in the Netherlands (two projects), Belchatow in Poland, three in the UK (Lingsnorth, Longannet and (tibury) and one in Italy.  The Industry Committee of the EU Parliament on March 31 called for guarantees that if money would not be used for earmarked projects before 2010 it would be spent  in energy efficiency and “smart city” projects. The Committee therefore wants the Commission to submit the proposal on the eligibility and selection criteria that apply for the energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to Parliament and Council by September 2009.

The EHA organised a meeting with the Brussels Transport Authority STIB, to discuss the integration of the hydrogen buses in their fleet. STIB has recently conducted a well to wheel analysis of alternative vehicles and demonstrated an interest in the use of hydrogen and natural gas mixtures to facilitate the development of internal  technical expertise in working with hydrogen. STIB currently is not investing in hydrogen buses but would be interested in testing the vehicles, not only buses. The hydrogen bus developed by Belgian bus manufacturer Van Hool, has completed test runs for the “De Lijn” bus service in Antwerp last December. The EHA  in collaboration with the EHA’s Belgian association member, VSWB, is in discussion with the Brussels Environment Authority, BIM, to include the integration of  hydrogen applications in the Brussels Climate Plan.

On March 13  European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik, opened a new facility for testing fuel consumption and emissions of trucks and buses. The new installation, “VELA 7″ at the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra (Northern Italy), realistically simulates wind drag, tyre/road friction and full drive cycles for real-life articulated lorries of up to 40 tonnes or 12m long buses. It comes at a crucial time since implementation guidelines for new emission standards, notably the Euro VI regarding heavy duty vehicles, must be defined by 1st April 2010. “Today, Europe’s freight transport by trucks reaches 1888 billion tonne-kilometers every year; increasing trucks efficiency will significantly reduce fuel consumption. The Commission’s new facility will make a great contribution to the Commission’s priorities in these areas.” The new high-tech test facility, the seventh in a series of Vehicle Emission Laboratories (VELA), contains an impressive roller bench in a climatic chamber to test exhaust gases from heavy duty vehicles with top- notch measuring equipment. It will enable JRC researchers to tackle the challenges in implementing current, and developing future, emission standards for lorries and buses by using test cycles that are very close to real life conditions. The JRC [...]

The long term goal of the Platform is to promote the development of hydrogen economy in Hungary. Members of the platform are research intstitutes, university departments, public associations and private companies from the energy sector.

The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell National Technology Platform (HTC Platform) held its first general assembly and a project kick-off meeting 3rd of February 2009 in Budapest.

The Platform is managed by CHIC Central Hungarian Innovation Centre Npc. and has already been joined by several research institutes, university departments, public associations and private companies from the energy sector, for example the Department of Energy Engineering of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), the Dep. of Biotechnology and Dep. of Solid State and Radiochemistry of the University of Szeged, the Chemical Research Center and the Research Institute for Technical Physics and Material Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, etc.