European Hydrogen Week 2023: hydrogen in the energy transition

Brussels: European Hydrogen Week 2023 will, over five days, highlight the role of hydrogen in the energy transition.

As the world works to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12th December 2015, which “aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that hydrogen technologies will play a vital part in achieving these goals.

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“If you went to the European Hydrogen Week 2023 on the opening day, you could see there all European industry present.

“And you could see many different stands exhibiting a vast range and variety of systems, lorries, cars, many different parts of this industry, because it’s an “industry of industries”.

“You could see there many tools and solutions of different kinds. They’re already there and industry is looking for a signal from the EU giving them direction.

“So, I hope that what the declarations and speeches from the President of the Commission herself, putting her weight into this will give the right impetus to industry,” – Christophe Yvetot, United Nations Industrial Development Organization Representative to the European Union, the European Investment Bank, OACPS, Belgium and Luxembourg.

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European Hydrogen Week 2023 has been a collaboration between Hydrogen Europe, the European Commission, and the Clean Hydrogen Partnership.

The focus is to facilitate discussions, knowledge sharing, and exploration of new advancements in the hydrogen sector.

I spoke to Max Wilbrink, a Gaseous Propulsion Engineer as part of a Dutch student team, AeroDelft, which is working on developing a hydrogen-powered aircraft. “Our goal is to promote liquid hydrogen as an alternative aviation fuel,” he told me.

“We do this by first of all building this prototype aircraft. This one you see here is radio controlled, however we’re working on an existing aircraft model, which originally was a four-seater and it has a combustion engine, modifying it in such a way that it can actually fly on hydrogen by using a fuel cell and an electro-cooled motor.

“At first we want to fly it on liquid hydrogen as well. We haven’t flown this on hydrogen at all yet.

“This is a student project that has been going for a couple of years now. It started in 2017 or 2018, around that time.

“Each year a new team of students come in and the old ones go out. So the knowledge is transferred to the new team and they continue the project.

“The first few years they built this prototype aircraft and two years ago, they started with the larger aircraft. Right now we are finishing up the design so that next year they can implement all the systems.

“And then in about one and a half years time we’ll fly them hydrogen.”

Katherine Chamberlain, Senior Manager New Project Development, Toyota Motor Manufacturing (UK) introduced me to a stunning looking vehicle, the first prototype of the Fuel Cell Hilux.

“Together with Toyota Motor Europe, based in Belgium, and Ricardo UK, one of our UK government funding consortium partners, we’ve designed, developed and built the Fuel Cell Hilux within 18 months.

“So what you’re looking at here in the engine bay is the Fuel Cell Stack Assembly.

“That is a component from the Mirai. So it’s exactly the same as the Mirai Generation 2 Fuel Cell Stack.

“We’ve taken that component along with other key components like the hydrogen tanks to help us do the fuel cell conversion very quickly in a shorter development time than normal.”

The engine itself looked like nothing I had ever seen before – this is a whole new era in automotive technology – indeed the only component I could actually identify correctly was the water tank for the windscreen washer!

Whilst public attention is focussed on electric/hybrid vehicles the hydrogen revolution has been quietly building in the background.

Geoffroy De Roffignac, Sales and Marketing Director of Atawey, a French manufacturer and distributor of green hydrogen refuelling stations, informed me that his country currently has 70 hydrogen refuelling stations operational, of which 25 were installed by his company.

The French government has set the ambitious target of 1,000 such stations by 2030.
Compound annual growth rate in the sector is expected to reach 49.8% by that point.
Toyota Motor is pushing to sell 200,000 hydrogen powered vehicles in Europe and China by 2030, executives said in July of this year.