On July 14, 2020 fraternité, liberté et egalité were celebrated in a meeting in the Port of Rotterdam on board a large container ship, the Marea. Sporting a fuel cell car on its roof (courtesy of local techncial consultancy Ekinetix), the Marea vessel is sailing under the flag of HTS Group every week between Rotterdam, Duisburg, Neuss  and Antwerp with over 300 containers on board. Hosted by the crew of the Marea, an alliance of public authorities and local stakeholders, supporting hydrogen infrastructure development along EU’s main transport  corridors,  cooperating in the Rhine Hydrogen Integration Network of Excellence, RH2INE, were able to see upclose the daily shipping operations in the port and how hydrogen could play a role to clean their operations. The EHA has supported the R2HINE initiative from the start.
the meeting took place in a spirit of:

Liberté, as the entrepreneurial spirit of local companies and services in and around the ports like HTS, is key to ensure a lasting impact on local and CO2 emissions.

Egalité, as these alliances are able to detect chances for all potential stakeholders covering the whole value chain, from hydrogen use in mobile equipment, H2 supply and disitribution and clean hydrogen production.

Fraternité, as RH2INE started as a cross border cooperation between the province of South Holland and the Region of North Rhine Westfalia supporting market players, transport service companies, shipbuilders, H2 suppliers and local tech advice companies to kickstart the integration of hydrogen in major transport corridorsin europe.

As the deployment of larger numbers of mobile equipment is becoming urgent, in parallel to development of large H2 infrastructure for industrial demand for clean hydrogen as the EU H2 Strategy presented last week, the EHA calls for the EU and Member States to facilitate EU Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding for the first larger series of vessels, trucks and urban logisitics to facilitate the engagement of all market players necessary for a lasting impact of hydrogen on local and CO2 emission reduction.