MiM reports back: Annual meeting Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Network North Rhine-Westphalia

A fine selection of presentations was on the menu – apart from the superb lunch that was served. The annual meeting of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Network North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) started with the announcement of an NRW-Dutch cooperation. Dr Jens Baganz, State Secretary at the economy and energy ministry, together with a representative of the Netherlands' State Secretary of transport, announced the joint development of a serial-hybrid-fuel cell bus based on the Phileas. It will be the first eighteen meter bus with such a drive train. Sounds familiar? MindsinMotion.net reported on this project last week.

Flesh on the bones
The cities of Amsterdam and Cologne have both committed to purchase two of the buses. Mr Baganz told the audience that he was “happy to see some flesh on the bones” after NRW and the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding back in 2005 to more intensively cooperate in the field of innovation.

Dutch representative Mr Oldenburg stressed the need for the Netherlands, being a small country, to co-operate with international partners. He announced that State Secretary Mrs Tineke Huizinga-Heringa has decided to allocate 3.9 million Euro to the project. Now that is flesh.

Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway
In the session focusing on international activities, Mr Sven Wolf of Hydrogen Sweden presented the Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway Partnership (SHHP). This international initiative aims to facilitate an early market for hydrogen. From the current four filling stations in Denmark, Norway and Sweden combined, the partnership wants to grow to fifteen stations by the year 2015. But to reach their goal, more vehicles and new partners must be found and availability must be made to match customer demand.

Got curious? Find out more by reading our article on the SHHP.

Go conquer
If anyone was still under the impression that there is no market for hydrogen buses, they must keep in mind the figures Mr Boris Jelmer of the Hydrogen Bus Alliance presented. This alliance comprises a range of cities cooperating to form a buyers' consortium. Every year these cities buy no less than fourteen hundred buses in total. At the moment a mere fraction of these are hydrogen buses. There is a world yet to conquer!

Opportunities
The international session was followed by a session on the various forms of and possibilities for hydrogen and hydrogen infrastructure. Whether industrial based, biogenous, or stemming from wind energy, representatives of various organisations (ranging from the National Hydrogen and Fuel cell technology Organisation (NOW GmbH), to the Wuppertal Institute, Duisburg-Essen University, and Planet GbR engineering and consulting) were all equally optimistic about the opportunities hydrogen offers.

Regional activities
The third and last session was dedicated to regional activities in North Rhine Westphalia. It began with an overview by Dr Andreas Ziolek of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Network NRW.

An appealing project is the fuel cell box student competition 2008/2009. A hundred schools, twice as many teams and over five hundred students participate. The teams have to build their own fuel cell forklifts consisting of components provided to them in a kit.

In the running up to the eighteenth World Hydrogen Energy Conference, to be held in Essen, Germany, in 2010, NRW is also investing in a regional Hydrogen HyWay. One of the projects incorporated in it is the NRW-Dutch fuel cell bus mentioned above. Hyways are hot: we had just heard Mr Wolf's presentation on the Scandinavian version.

Forward glance
Followed more and less technical presentations, ranging from 'standardization and inspection in fuel cell technology', to 'natural gas and hydrogen on sewage plants'.

The session ended with a forward glance towards said World Hydrogen Energy Conference 2010. MindsinMotion.net is already looking forward to it. But all in due time. There is much to be achieved until then.