One sign that an industry is maturing is when the first prototypes or their replicas end up in a museum – like the 30-year-old Necar 1, the first car with a fuel cell drive. It is a van whose cargo space is almost entirely filled with the fuel cell system, hydrogen tank and accessories. The original is on display at the Cellcentric factory in Esslingen. Also exhibited at the site are the fuel cell module generations developed by the company itself. Each new generation is visibly more compact and delivers more power in the same space.
“More power” is also increasingly evident in Germany’s electrolysis plants, which now more and more frequently have two- or three-digit megawatt capacities. Although progress is slower than hoped a few years ago, over one gigawatt of electrolysis capacity is now under construction, as HZwei author Niels Hendrik Petersen reports.
And despite what the headlines might sometimes suggest, Germany is not walking the hydrogen path alone. There is the EU, which is pushing on climate protection – even if in the hydrogen sector it is best known for its unpopular Delegated Act on the temporal correlation between electricity consumption and production.
In German power plant planning, EU competition authorities made it clear to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs that no money would be distributed to power plant operators without a clear pathway to climate neutrality – in other words, hydrogen. And for the first time, hydrogen pipelines are now officially included in European grid planning.
In hydrogen nation Japan, Fukushima Prefecture in particular has been pushing hard for green energy since the nuclear disaster in 2011 – there are now even hydrogen-powered bicycles there. My colleague Monika Rößiger learned this at a presentation by Masao Uchibori, the Governor of Fukushima.
Oman has also begun its hydrogen ramp-up – with the prospect of selling green gas to Europe and Germany in particular. But the memoranda of understanding once signed are no longer being taken so seriously in Germany. The Omanis are not amused, as our freelance author Natascha Plankermann reports after her recent trip. One can only hope that Germany does not earn an international reputation as one of those customers who first have a list of special requests and then end up buying nothing. That would backfire – and not just for the hydrogen industry.
