The “Ordine degli Ingegneri” of Bergamo on June 30, 2016 invited the EHA to talk about the most recent EU programs that are supporting the deploymennt of hydrogen and fuel cells. At the same event Silvana di Matteo board member of HyER and responsible for electromobility in Lombardia gave an overview of ups and downs over the last 10 years of their regional FCH activities. Angelo Moreno of the Italian Energy Agency ENEA and president of H2IT the Italian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association Association, pointed to recent developments around the world and the latest new FCEV models of all major automotive companies. He referred to the 18 mln of 22 mln passenger cars in Italy that are between 10 and 20 years old and the need to change: the mobilitah2.it initiative is following the recent German, British, Dutch and French H2Mobility, that is describing a potential roll out for FCEV and stations in Italy. The numbers are quite modest still for Italy (1000FCEV, 100 bus and 20stations in 2020), but with FIAT chief Sergio Marchionna warming up to all battery models (see also recent AlixPartners study) these numbers might quickly change.
The next day on July 1, the Federation of Scientific and Technical Associatiosn FAST that is managing our EHA office in Brussels since 2006, organized one of their media Tech Briefs in Milan for an audience of selected communication experts and journalists. In two hours the audience was uodated on all things mobility and storage involving hydrogen. Angelo Moreno this time pointed to the link with the vast potential of solar for Italy 1000 sqkm are needed nationally to cover the 164Mtoe of energy demand in Italy that would come down to 12,5hectare per municpality as small as 8000.
Luigi Crema of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler presented a study on different H2 storage solutions in view of the change in energy flows caused by the integration of renewable and distributive systems and digitilisation of dispatch.
Paolo Fracas of GenPort, presented his company’s focus on small back up power and FC based energy management that offer simple and certified on site fuel cell solutions. As spin off of the Politecnico in Milan GenPort is one of the successful Italian companies who for over 10 years has managed to put commerciak FC systems on the market.
Ilaria Rosso of electro power systems, a joint venture of two Politecnico spin off’s electro power in Turin and Elvy Energy in Milan, that develop diesel FC hybride back up power systems that provide an integrated solution.
The EHA was told that on July 8, the Italian H2 Mobility platform “mobilitah2.it” is being presented to various Italian Ministries at an electromobility event in Catania.