Look back on 2021
2021 has been another challenging year for the planet: the pandemic continues on in an ever-evolving fashion; and climate change continues to remind us of the grave threat it poses to life with heatwaves, fires, and serve rainfall. HyTrEc2 used these hardships as a motivation, becoming more determined and innovative and have had another impressive year.
The HyTrEc2 year began with the deployment of a big red truck in Groningen, the new waste collection vehicle runs exclusively off of hydrogen helping to reduce emissions of the City while still optimising performance. This fuel cell waste truck demonstrates the suitability of green hydrogen to carry heavy loads and power onboard machinery.
{Fuel Cell Electric Waste Truck drives down bicycle-lined-street in Groningen}
Early in 2021, further advances were made with the hydrogen refuelling station (HRS) in Narvik. This HRS allows for students at the Artic University of Norway to have hands-on-experience with hydrogen, which will help to broaden their understanding and develop more highly-skilled hydrogen experts.
{Hydrogen Refuelling Station in snowy Narvik}
Excellent news came in the middle of the year, when HyTrEc2 was awarded call 12 extension. This project extension will allow us to explore hydrogen use cases even further, the partners will be investigating hydrogen deployment in 'ports' (both air and water) to help to curb emissions from the most polluting sector of transport.
{Green hydrogen powered vessel, Energy Observer, sailing from Aberdeen Harbour with a rainbow and wind turbines in the distance, Autumn 2019}
In addition, the project embarked upon a new digital webinar series to extend the learning opportunities that the project has already provided. This webinar series had two session in 2021, one on green hydrogen deployment from a City perspective and the other on important HyTrEc2 reports, two of which also launched this year. The skills survey was an additional element that HyTrEc2 partner, atene Kom, undertook to ensure the needs of the hydrogen sector are incorporated into the HyTrEc2 modules. The Standards and Legislation report is a seminal piece of work completed by Cenex, which outlines all the hydrogen regulation that exists at present within the North Sea Region, this inevitably will become a crucial document that companies, legislators, academia, and hydrogen-enthusiasts turn to.
One more important event of 2021, was the announcement of partner Aberdeen City Council that a preferred bidder had been selected to help take forward the ambitions to become a green hydrogen hub. This announcement of course stemmed for the HyTrEc2 Aberdeen green hydrogen business case.
{Aberdeen City Council Leader Jenny Laing, remarks that the preferred bidder announcement for the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub 'is a huge milestone for Aberdeen'}
Some other stories from 2021: here, here and here. From all of us here at HyTrEc2, we wish that 2022 be fuelled by hydrogen!