EHA Newsletter February 2009

The EHA contributed to  the European Economic Social Committtee’s  exploratory opinion “Education and training needs for the carbon-free energy society” (TEN 364) that has been requested by EU Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs. At a hearing that was attended by the commissoner the EHA suggested the creation of an EU network of National Clean Energy Education Forums  to facilitate the integration of clean energy topics in national school curricula. Since 2006 he EHA is hosting an organisational secretariat HYFED 6 that is maintaining a database of educational materials on hydrogen and fuel cells and a contact database of educators in Europe involved in energy education. To subscribe to the HYFED6 news please register on the EHA website.

As the European Parliament is voting March 11 on its report on the Integrated Pollution and Prevention and Control Directive and Member States will decide in the March EU Council.  The EHA reinforced its attempts to convince law makers that the authorisation of small H2 reformers should be facilitated by the new Directive. Letters were sent to both the EP rapporteur and the Commission: although the perception seems to persist that the market for these reformers is still small and therfore not worth considering, facilitated authorisation of these smaller units is crucial for the first demonstration projects that are currently being launched under the JTI programme. Under the current Directive proposal small reformers will still need to follow the same procedures as for large scale systems.

The European Investment is setting up a Clean Bus Financiang Facility that will provide € 15 mln funding to clean bus projects already this year. “We have two basic lines of action. One is energy efficiency and the other is public transport. Our intention is to use new technologies like hydrogen or hybrid buses to be implemented in cities using green public procurement rules”, said Mario Aymerich of the EIB. Funding will go to projects that can demonstrate their ability to deliver on the EU’s so-called 20-20-20 policy of reducing greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020, and covering 20% of its energy needs with renewables by the same date, he explained. The EIB is currently working with the European Commission to set up a 15 million euro fund to offer cities “technical assistance” in developing projects. The facility has not yet been officially approved, but this should be announced “in the coming days,” Aymerich said.”Once the projects are there, we can really start talking numbers,” said Nick Antonovics, a spokesperson for the EIB. “We’re talking about projects for big cities,” he added, saying these could reach “billions”.According to Aymerich, “the new element of this facility is that, instead of financing up to 50% [...]

EU Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs presented the annual EU Sustainable Energy Awards during the  EU Sustainable Energy Week to 6 projects that are part of the EU Sustainable Energy Campaign. The HYFLEET CUTE project, the world’s  biggest hydrogen and fuel cell bus demonstration project, was the winner in the category “Demonstration and Dissemination”. Monika Kentzler of Daimler, the project coordinator, thanked the 31 partners  that includes teams in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Hamburg, Berlin, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Perth, Reykjavik operating 47 buses in regular daily services. HYFLEET CUTE is organizing a workshop on March 3,  2009 in Brussels for local authorities and bus operators to present the results of the project so far. For more information and registration please visit the HYFLEET CUTE website.

The first call for proposals 2009 of the French Hydrogen and Fuel cell programme Hpac has been published at the site of the French National Agency for Research  l’ANR.  The Call is divided among three topics: 1. Hydrogen Production; 2. Hydrogen Storage; 3. Fuel Cells. Deadline for this Call is March 30 2009, 1300 hrs.

At the Annual press conference of the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, DWV, at the Presss office of the German Parliament on Febraury 18, 2009, Peter Froeschle of Daimler AG explained that Daimler is developing battery and fuel cell vehicles to power  future transport applications. He emphasized that battery and fuel cell cars will not be competing but will rather complement each other in range and capacity. Andreas Ziolek of EnergieAgentur NRW in Düsseldorf and chairman of the 26 Regions and Municpalities Partenrship, HyER (formerly HyRaMP), hosted by the EHA, presented the efforts of the regions to contribute to the EU Joint Undertaking for hydrogen and fuel cells.  Joachim Wolf, DWV’s president listed 10 key requests for political action: 1. Development of a legal support framework for the effective integration of H2 as an energy carrier; 2. Intelligent and sustainable use of all energy sources; 3. A comprehensive political strategy to deploy regenerative energy; 4. Tax exemption for H2 as an energy carrier; 5. Efficient use of all primary energy sources; 6. Focus on H2 and Electricity as universal energy carriers; 7. Support for technology development; 8. Development of new energy concepts with incentives for renewable energy stored in [...]