Preparing for hydrogen

Having spent over 20 years within the area of fuel cells and hydrogen, it is exciting to see the massive increase in interest for hydrogen over the last few months. This includes hydrogen as a fuel, hydrogen as a tool to reach zero carbon production within the industry, and as a base for production of renewable fuels or as energy storage in the energy sector. EU has set a well-spread strategy to support all these ahead, presented this July.

EU-strategy on hydrogen

The number of hydrogen related discussions and projects are increasing, not only for us at Sweco Sweden, but also for our Sweco colleagues in e.g. Norway, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, UK and Germany. At this stage, I like to reflect on the figure below, which I drew to sum up our work in the EU funded Hydrogen Infrastructure for Transport, the so called HIT-project. In beginning of 2015, we globally worked to intense the introduction phase, arguing for the need of incentives, increasing knowledge and acceptance. Now, five years later, we have partly succeeded and focus the work on the early market development.

I look ahead with wonder and excitement, we are actually developing the future hydrogen market and business at this very moment – together with the front runners, component suppliers, ministries, energy companies, end-users, investors and all other necessary stakeholders. At this moment, we have to take care of a precious window of opportunity to transfer ideas into reality without losing the patience to succeed with the EU 2050 targets – although the most business models still have to be developed for the energy market in change – to shape the change.

The Sweco status summary from 2015; The different phases of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure implementation together with supporting activities within information/dissemination.