On the 7th of September, Air Liquide officially opened its first public hydrogen filling station for passenger cars in Germany, in the city of Düsseldorf. This station will be followed by 10 new hydrogen filling stations that will be designed, built and rolled out in the next three years under the auspices of the German government’s major demonstration project. By 2015 Germany will have a supply network of at least 50 public filling stations.Thes esteps are in line with the Group’s announcement in October 2011 that it would invest in 20 new stations in Europe.  This follows the opening of two more stations by Air Liquide recently in Oslo and Brugg.

In Japan, the government sees hydrogen as a promising major energy source for cars and expects to install about 100 hydrogen distribution stations for fuel cell vehicles by 2015. Air Liquide Japan intends to build a significant number of them and, in support of this goal, has recently set up a specialized team focused on the hydrogen business. The Group is already very active in Japan in this field, having so far installed 3 hydrogen energy stations (in Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Saga). One of these stations demonstrated the feasibility of a complete “Blue Hydrogen” chain, from wood chips to clean mobility.