You can find the final report of the Study on Development of Business Cases for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Applications for European Regions and Cities here.
Background
SInce 2016, the FCH JU undertook significant efforts to reach out to all those European regions and cities having an interest in the potential use of fuel cell and hydrogen (FCH) based products to help them achieve their decarbonisation goals. With the specific goal of establishing an ambitious collaboration platform to facilitate market introduction, the FCH JU took on a large scale effort to reach out to as many regions and cities in Europe as possible and offered to work closely with them to develop market opportunities.
This commitment to work with regions and cities is being implemented from 2017 by launching a study that will:
- assess the business cases for fuel cell and hydrogen applications that local authorities are seeking
- put them directly in touch with industry players
- help them map their local capabilities so that they can exploited in the future
- identify existing funding sources to implement future projects
The study will be organised through working groups that look at the various applications of key interest to the participating public authorities.
In order to formalise the commitment for this collaboration, the FCH JU is asking interested parties to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
A special signing ceremony took place on the occasion of the FCH JU Stakeholder Forum on 23 November 2016, in which representatives from 17 regions and cities, as well as the Committee of the Regions, participated, out of 45 confirmed participants. Since that time, interest in the initiative has increased substantially.
Participants in the initiative (as of January 2019): 92 regional and local authorities representing 22 countries in Europe (view the map).
Latest updates
The participating regions and cities completed a survey to provide insights into their ambitions and challenges for FCH deployment. The strongest drivers for pursuing these applications are industrial innovation, development and additional employment opportunities in the region, with 32% of the regions having already a dedicated FCH strategy in place, as part of their political agenda. In this regard, Nordic and Central Europe regions exhibit the highest levels of experience.
The results of the survey can be found here.
Local workshops: the second round of workshops in different cities throughout Europe took place in April 2018. More info here.
Participating in the initiative
If you are interested to know more about this initiative and consider participating, we would love to hear from you. You can find more information in this presentation.
As mentioned above, the FCH JU asks interested parties to sign a MoU.
For all inquiries and the MoU template, please contact fch-regions
fch [dot] europa [dot] eu (fch-regions(at)fch.europa.eu)