The European Commission last October presented its Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) (COM 2011/665) as a new financial instrument to boost investment in key EU Transport (TEN T), Energy (TEN E) and ICT (TEN i) infrastructure developments to further enhance EU’s internal market, boost EU’s competitiveness and support EU’s sustainable growth ambitions. The text of the CEF is not fully clear on concrete funding support for the introduction of alternative fuels along road corridors in the proposed TEN T Core Network. Therefore the EHA, in collaboration with the European regions in HyER over the last year has been actively investigating the use of TEN T funding to integrate hydrogen infrastructure along key transport corridors in Europe. Also the use of hydrogen in potential large scale energy storage projects in the priority projects in TEN E needs to be clarified as the required storage capacities is very large.
To gain more practical insight the EHA joined a FCH JU project consortium that links wind energy with new electrolyser technology to material handling activities in large logistics centres and is building alliances with sister organisations to further promote the role of hydrogen in connecting clean energy technology to clean transport technology. The EHA also started the collection of experiences with the integration of large numbers of renewable power installations at national and local level, as well as of information on new developments in electrolyser and hydrogen storage technology to gather fact based arguments to include hydrogen storage technology next to conventional storage solutions in further EU policy support programs and financial facilities. The input of EHA’s industrial members and national member associations is crucial to map opportunities and political support as the CEF dossier is going through EU Parliament and council in the coming months.