Valencia, 23 June 2023. – Yesterday afternoon, the 4th meeting of the H2PORTS Stakeholders Group was held in virtual format with a great success of attendance, reaching more than 70 attendees.
The objective of this group is to promote the exchange of knowledge, experiences and good practices on the use of hydrogen in the maritime-port sector. One of its main activities is the organisation of thematic meetings in which the state of the technology is presented and inspiring results of real projects developed in the sector are shared.
On this occasion, the use of H2 in mobility applications was chosen as the central topic of the meeting, and four relevant speakers were invited. Firstly, Miguel Ángel Castro, Cofounder and Mobility Manager at Scalegas, spoke about the use of H2 for road transport at cities, unpacking the lessons learned in the management of a 1st 700bar-H2 Refuelling station infrastructure in Spain than entered in operation in 2021.
Next Miguel Ángel Alonso, Engineering and European Funds Office Director at Alsa National Express, explained the H2 Buses experiences for urban transport and their implementation in medium and long distance voyages.
For its part, Jacob Goldberg, Environmental Specialist at Port of Los Angeles, gave a presentation on H2 trucks demonstrators in port environments in the frame of STS project (Shore to Store). Goldberg explained how a fleet of 10 hydrogen fuel cell class 8 trucks were tested during 1 year in the port and the fuelling station grid to supply the vehicles.
Finally, Kim Nguyen, Hydrogen Projects Engineer at Norled, addressed the World first Liquid H2 ferry for passengers with a special focus on technology change issues, ship design and building, LH2 storage system onboard and bunkering operations aspects in this innovative ship
It is also worth mentioning the participation in this meeting of the Head of Strategic Planning and Innovation of the Port Authority of Valencia, Juan Manuel Díez, who expressed his satisfaction at the interest aroused by this meeting and stressed the Port of Valencia’s commitment to the use of hydrogen as a clean energy.
The H2PORTS stakeholders group, created in January 2020, now has 70 member organisations from Europe, Canada, Japan and the United States.
H2PORTS
The European project “H2Ports – Implementing Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Technologies in Ports” is an initiative coordinated by Fundación Valenciaport in close collaboration with the Port Authority of Valencia and financed by the Clean Hydrogen JU. Its main objective is to test and validate hydrogen technologies on port machinery that allow to have applicable and real solutions without affecting the performance and safety of port operations and producing zero local emissions.
The H2Ports project entail a total investment of 4 million euros and involves, in addition to Fundación Valenciaport and the Port Authority of Valencia, the Centro Nacional del Hidrógeno, and the private companies MSC Terminal Valencia, Grimaldi Group, Hyster-Yale, Atena Distretto Alta Tecnologia Energia Ambiente, Ballard Power Systems Europe, Carburos Metálicos and Enagás.
Thanks to this initiative, the Port of Valencia will be the first port in Europe to incorporate hydrogen technologies to reduce the environmental impact of its operations.
More information: https://h2ports.eu/
About the Clean Hydrogen Partnership
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership – the successor of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) – aims to strengthen and integrate European Union research and innovation capacity to accelerate the development and improvement of advanced clean hydrogen applications ready for market, across energy, transport, building and industrial end-uses, while strengthening competitiveness of the Union clean hydrogen value chain. The three members of the partnership are the European Commission, fuel cell and hydrogen industries represented by Hydrogen Europe and the research community represented by Hydrogen Europe Research.
