The plenary session reflected the change in automotive moods since the WHEC 2014 in Korea: both BMW and Toyota referrred to increased customer and societal realities to explain their commitment of FCEV. The first day also offered detailed insight in the current national developments:. A snapshot:

Germany and NRW updated the audience on its 24 poiwer to gas projects nad refuelling stations network entertaining the audience with the 160 mln of now confirmed German government support up to 2020. As German renewable energy capacity will grow from 100 GW today  to 300 GW in 2050, the surplus of  1,5 TWh renewable energy that is produced today could power 150.000 FCEV . In 2050  this renewable oversupply may rise to  100 TWh enough to power 6 mln FCEV. To date 30 power to gas projects in Germany are demonstrating the viability of the power to gas solution.

University of Split professor Barbir presented a study on the renewable potential to power a hydrogen economy in Croatia, using the model that was used in Germany. A similar study was conducted by an Italian consortium led by the Politecnico of Milan supported by the Juelich Forschungszentrum.

Both Björn Simonsson of NEL as Steffen Møller-Holst of the Norwegian Hydrogen Forum referred to the interest of new actors joining the hydrogen infrastructure drive building on expertise dating back to the beginning of the last century in Norway. Dr. Barbir professor at the University of Split presented a study on the hydrogen potential based on projections for renewable energy. Croatia is looking at solar and wind. South Africa’s HySa is continuing to focus on powering the remote telecom sites as well hydrogen storage in metalhydrides

Russian developments, according to Dimitri Dunikov of the Academy of Sciences, concentrate on research although many opportunities exist in the deployment of remote power generation, as 70% of the population is not linked to the national grid. As the efficiency of energy use in bigger cities is only 15% linkage to fuel cells seems obvious.

Hui Li of the South University of Science and Technology of China referred t  the “explosion” in the interest in fuel cell buses. In May 2016 a new FC manufacturing line based on Ballard technology was launched. The 14. 000 buses and 2.9 mln passenger cars in Shenzen and the 60.000 buses and 5.4 mln cars in Beijing are huge markets; in 2020 200 mln cars will be on the road in China.  Also the potential of 13.3 bln kWh of excess Chinese wind power remains unused…

Romania Hydrogen Energy Association’s president, Ioan Iordache, indicated that although many dvelopments are happening in the West of Europe Fc and H2 clusters in Eastern Europe are struggling to attract EU government and industrial investments to maintain the high  level of technical expertise in these countries until markets and infrastructure will be developed there.

South Africa HySA program is continuing its activities in back up FC power of telecom sites, metalhydride storage research and catalyst research.