Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway Partnership

At the recent annual meeting of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Network North Rhine-Westphalia, Mr Sven Wolf of public private partnership Vätgas (Hydrogen) Sweden talked about the Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway Partnership (SHHP). The goal of this initiative is “ to facilitate an early market for hydrogen. Our vision is to make Scandinavia one of the first regions where hydrogen is available through a network of filling stations – and where it is being used!”

The state of things
Currently, four Scandinavian filling stations are in use: one in the Swedish city of Malmö (as of 2003), two in Norway: Stavanger ('06) and Grenland ('07), and a fourth station in Ringkøbing, Denmark ('08).

For next year seven new filling stations are planned. “In 2015 fifteen stations must be in use. By that time a hundred buses, five hundred passenger cars and five hundred special utility vehicles must be running on hydrogen”, says Wolf.

Networking bodies
Establishing all this requires cooperation to prevent fragmentation. National networking bodies Norwegian HyNor, Danish Hydrogen Link, and Hydrogen Sweden were established independent of one another to bypass the uncertainties that come with the introduction of emerging technologies, and to assure long-term commitment and risk sharing.

These bodies in turn work together within international networking platform SHHP towards their common goal. Regional clusters of major and small industries, research institutions and local or regional authorities also partake in the collaboration.

Close connections
Is the SHHP also linked to the Green Corridors Network, on which we reported last year, or to the German Hydrogen Highway – also presented at the annual meeting – in any way?

“I don't know the Green Corridors Network, so obviously not to that,” says Wolf. “But although we have no formal partnership with Germany as such, we do have connections in other ways. One of SHHP's main partners, StatoilHydro, also participates in the Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) Berlin – and soon in Hamburg as well, now that CEP is in phase two. So we're very much in discussion and trying to support each other. SHHP is looking forward to expanding a collaboration with the German alternatives.

We have agreed that if there is need for a formal partnership, we are open to that. As of yet, however, we see no reason to formalise things.”

Synergy
Even if hydrogen has the future, in the meantime Wolf looks further than to pure hydrogen alone. He stresses that “synergies with existing solutions and alternatives must be found”. MindsinMotion.net tried to stir up this debate earlier, in our latest Burning Issue.

More to be done
“But there is much more to be done”, warns Wolf. “More vehicles are needed, availability of vehicles must be made to match customers' demands and the partnership must expand to include more partners.”

As for the first, we can recommend a state of the art hydrogen bus: a serial-hybrid fuel cell bus to be jointly developed by NRW and the Netherlands. This project was presented at the very same conference, by NRW's State Secretary of Economic Affairs, Dr Jens Baganz, together with a representative of his Dutch colleague Ms Tineke Huizinga-Heringa.

Would the SHHP be interested in these new buses? “Absolutely,” Wolf replies, “We have a very clear policy: we're absolutely open to any and all vehicle manufacturers. We're interested in both cars and buses, and utility vehicles as well, using fuel cells or combustion engines, as long as they run on hydrogen. We're very pragmatic. In particular, in Oslo they want four buses, on which must be decided right now. They're evaluating different providers.”

Well, we can only applaud such open minds.