The European Commission’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership (CHP) has launched a call for proposals offering €300.5m ($333m) of grants “to support projects that boost renewable hydrogen production, reduce its costs, develop its storage and distribution solutions, and stimulate the use of low carbon hydrogen in hard to abate sectors, such as energy intensive industries, aviation or heavy duty transport”.
Projects that stimulate the deployment of so-called “hydrogen valleys” — industrial centres utilising large amounts of clean H2 — will also be eligible for the grants, which comes from Horizon Europe, the commission’s €95.5bn funding programme for research and innovation.
In total, there are 41 “topics” that the CHP will consider for grants, related to green hydrogen production, storage and distribution, transport, heat and power and other areas.
These include: offshore and off-grid production of green hydrogen; cryogenic liquid H2 containment for shipping, trucks and aviation; low-temperature and high-temperature high-pressure water electrolysers; inland waterway vessels; liquefaction equipment; solar thermochemical water splitting; hydrogen leak detection; fuel cells for aviation; and ammonia cracking.
“This momentous investment is essential to ensure the development of a dynamic hydrogen economy of diverse innovators, manufacturers, producers and end-users across the EU for a sustainable and prosperous hydrogen-based future,” said Bart Biebuyck, executive director of the CHP, which is the successor organisation to the Fuel Cells & Hydrogen Joint Undertaking.
CHP is a public-private partnership made up of three members: the European Commission, trade association Hydrogen Europe, and the latter’s research arm, Hydrogen Europe Research.
Hydrogen Europe is opposed to EU plans to only allow green hydrogen to be produced from new renewables projects.
