Summary of IPHE Global Hydrogen Forum 2020
On June 18, the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE) brought industry and government leaders together to identify the challenges, opportunities, policies, and mechanisms to accelerate global-scale deployments of hydrogen across the economy. The two-part digital event was dubbed the IPHE Global Hydrogen Forum 2020 and kicked off with a series of keynotes from Cabinet-level officials from the US, IEA, Europe, Japan and Australia, as well as from leaders from global hydrogen and fuel cell organizations. The second part of the program was a moderated panel with industry leaders that identified new opportunities and areas of collaboration between industry and government that can enable a global vision for hydrogen and fuel cells.
During the event, the 750-billion-euro European Economic Recovery Package was discussed and its inclusion of hydrogen: “A goal of rolling out renewable energy projects, especially wind and solar, and kick-starting a clean hydrogen economy in Europe”. The European Strategy on Energy System Integration was also discussed to use hydrogen as sector coupling to join different energy carriers. The strategy will officially be presented by the European Commission as part of the European Green Deal in July 2020. This will include a European Strategy for Hydrogen that will also be released around the same time. Hydrogen Europe discussed their recently published 2x40GW Green Hydrogen Initiative Paper and its implications with the European Green New Deal. Its objective is to promote a massive increase of electrolyzer production within the EU in order to support green hydrogen production.
Individual countries also presented their hydrogen strategy and funding. Within the EU, Germany recently unveiled their 9-billion-euro green hydrogen strategy to stimulate the green economy and expand the role of green hydrogen to help the country end its use of coal. Morocco announced that they are in the process of developing a hydrogen strategy. Japan presented their long history with hydrogen and the latest information on their hydrogen station roll out and hydrogen import. The first liquid hydrogen cargo ship will arrive early 2021 transporting liquid hydrogen from Hastings, Australia to Kobe, Japan. Also, in Japan, Fukushima is creating a hydrogen town with the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R) that includes a 10MW electrolyzer and 20MW of solar to provide hydrogen for fuel cell rail, buses, and cars. Lastly Nel presented their new facility that can produce 1GW of electrolyzers per year.
The full recordings of both parts of the digital event can be found here: https://www.iphe.net/virtualh2forum
This report was prepared by Cory Shumaker, CHBC Development Specialist