The EU industry week was organised on 23-26 of February by the European Commission on which STRIA South Transdanubian Innovation Agency Nonprofit Ltd. (STRIA) also participated as the Hungarian partner of the eBussed Interreg Europe project. The event focused on opportunities to reach the new 2030 target in emission reduction and how the pandemic situation resulted new growth solutions.
Source: https://www.euindustrydays.eu/pages/highlights
The invited speakers discussed low carbon, affordable energy for industrial transformation, circular public procurement, regional cooperation for climate neutral Europe among others. These topics are closely related to the eBussed project, which supports the transition on low carbon mobility and facilitates the integration of electricity production based on renewables.
The renewable energy market will have to grow 15-20 % annually to achieve the 2030 renewable energy targets, including alternative clean energy technologies. Many solutions were mentioned such as the solar energy, wind industry. As a possible solution, hydrogen could also get a significant role to reduce the emission. It is flammable but not harmful to health and it is the most common element in the universe. Businesses need to invest more into green dihydrogen which is also a clean dihydrogen and it will be price-competitive by 2030 which is also affected by the fact that the cost of electrolysers has been falling.
Source: http://goldimodi.com/galeria/
On the other side many tryouts were introduced in transportation in the past decades where hydrogen propulsion was implemented. Nowadays, bus manufacturers and operators would like to choose this kind of a propulsion. The polish Solaris manufacture already produced buses with hydrogen fuel cells which is called Urbino Hydrogen 12 in 2019. At the time they received orders right away for 12 hydrogen buses from the city of Bolzano. A bus operator, the Flixbus plan to use hydrogen buses across Europe in which cases the distances are great and worth to use these instead of traditional buses. In the latest news, the Hungarian Goldi Mobility Ltd. will introduce the first European 18-meter-long articulated hydrogen bus named GOLDiON H18. The company’s Hungarian specialists have been actively involved in all phases and have contracts with the largest producers in the world in terms of hydrogen technology. Beside the hydrogen bus, e-buses and e-coaches will be available on the market from April 2021. First of all, the company would like to satisfy the public transportation needs of Hungary then fulfil the foreign orders.
Based on the lessons learnt during the EU industry week and the relevant news, hydrogen could be the key resource for the next decades with creating the right conditions and it has certainly a place as alternative propulsion in transportation.
The eBussed project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and Hungary.