Hydrogen Valleys are regional ecosystems that link hydrogen production, transportation, and various end uses such as mobility or industrial feedstock. An important step towards advancing hydrogen technologies and enabling the development of a sustainable hydrogen economy, the idea is to demonstrate how all the different parts of the use of hydrogen as an energy vector fit together in an integrated system approach.

The concept has gained momentum and is now one of the main priorities of industry and the European Commission for scaling-up hydrogen deployments and creating interconnected hydrogen ecosystems across Europe. A Hydrogen Valley should not only demonstrate how hydrogen technologies work in synergy, but it should also work complementary to other elements in the energy sector, such as renewable production, gas infrastructure, electricity grid, batteries, etc. A key objective is to demonstrate the notion of ‘system efficiency and resilience’ – it is not only the energy efficiency of a single application that matters but the overall energy and economic efficiency and resilience of the integrated system.

According to the Clean Energy Partnership, the nine Hydrogen Valley projects it has selected are expected to mobilise investments of at least five times the funding provided by the European Union (EU). They will contribute to meeting objectives under the REPowerEU Plan, which targets the production of 10mn tonnes of green hydrogen and the import of 10mn tonnes of renewable hydrogen into the EU by 2030. The Partnership also reports that the European Commission has allocated it an additional €200mn through REPowerEU, aiming to double the number of Hydrogen Valleys in Europe by 2025.

The Clean Energy Partnership has started the grant preparations for two flagship Hydrogen Valley projects of a scale significantly larger to what has been supported to date – ie producing at least 5,000 t/y of hydrogen with interlinkages to other places of hydrogen production and/or consumption outside project boundaries. The first will be spread across the North Adriatic area (comprising Croatia, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy, and Slovenia) and the second aims to build a hydrogen corridor across Baltic Sea countries, including Estonia and South Finland.

The North Adriatic Hydrogen Valley project will be led by the main Slovenian electricity producer HSE, supported by clean energy technology company ECUBES. Including 34 organisations from government, research and industry, it will cover the entire value chain from production through storage and distribution to final end use of hydrogen as a key energy vector in multiple sectors. The other transnational project gathers 44 organisations from regions around the Baltic Sea.

The seven smaller scale Hydrogen Valleys projects (producing at least 500 t/y of hydrogen) will focus on areas of Europe with no or limited presence of a hydrogen market – regions in Bulgaria (Stara Zagora), Greece (Crete and Corinthia), Ireland (Galway), Italy (Lombardy), Turkey (South Marmara) and Luxembourg.

As part of its work to support research and innovation activities in hydrogen technologies in Europe, the Clean Hydrogen Partnership has set up a dedicated global platform for Hydrogen Valleys for exchanges of best practices and matchmaking activities. It currently features 25 European projects at different stages of development.

New UK certification to boost British hydrogen sector
Meanwhile, the UK government has unveiled plans for what it claims will be the first globally recognised certification scheme that will ‘verify the sustainability of low-carbon hydrogen and give consumers the confidence to invest in cleaner energy’.

‘There is currently no recognised way for producers of low-carbon hydrogen to prove the credentials of their product. The introduction of a reliable method to demonstrate the emissions credentials of hydrogen will play a vital role in decarbonising the UK hydrogen sector, promoting cross-border trade whilst stimulating growth and jobs in green hydrogen,’ says the government. It plans to introduce the certification scheme by 2025.

The scheme intends to use the methodology set out in the UK’s Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard as the basis of the certification. It builds on the commitments made in the British Energy Security Strategy to double the UK’s hydrogen ambition for up to 10 GW of new low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030.