The Aragon Hydrogen Foundation (FHa), with its extensive experience in hydrogen projects, has been, is and will be a key player in the definition and implementation of Clean Hydrogen Partnership projects.
With 33 funded projects, the FHa is the most successful Spanish entity in the Clean Hydrogen Partnership calls for proposals and is among the 20 most successful in Europe.
When it comes to proposing and carrying out projects, in our case green hydrogen projects, the people who make up the FHa are in constant contact with the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. But do we really know the context of this partnership?
Clean Hydrogen Partnership: a public-private partnership
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership is a public-private Institutional Partnership of the European Union that supports research and innovation (R&I) activities in hydrogen technologies in Europe with the objective of contributing to the creation of a strong, innovative and competitive European clean hydrogen sector that is fully capable of sustaining and enabling the energy transition. Its members are the European Commission on the public side and the private associations Hydrogen Europe (HE) and Hydrogen Europe Research (HER) representing industry and academia respectively. It is the heir of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH-JU) that operated between 2007 and 2020, so the FHa has had the opportunity to experience the start-up and consolidation of this partnership.
Within this galloping and dynamic context of work, collaboration comes into play. All institutions, whether public or private, are working at the same pace to make the strategies key elements that suggest the advancement of green hydrogen projects in Europe and the world.
The governance of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership is governed, firstly, by the Governing Board, the main decision-making body with representation from all three members. This is followed by the Programme Office led by Executive Director Valerie Bouillon-Delporte, who is responsible for the day-to-day management and implementation of all its activities. In addition, the States Representatives Group, which is made up of one representative from each Member State and each country associated to Horizon Europe. Finally, the Stakeholder Group acts as a formal advisory body.
During Horizon Europe, the European Union (EU) framework programme for research and innovation (R&I) for the period 2021-2027, the Clean Hydrogen Partnership will allocate EUR 1 billion of EU public funding. This amount of funding will have to be matched by the two private partners through in-kind contributions. The three members committed through the publication in March 2022 of the Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA) to jointly support the design and implementation of a roadmap and the funding of a common programme of R&D&I activities in the long term.
Roadmaps and technical committees
The SRIA is articulated in different working groups called technical committees in the following seven pillars: production, distribution, mobility (batteries in mobility), power and heat (batteries in stationary), cross-cutting, value chain and hydrogen valleys, which are further developed through sub-working groups called roadmaps. HER members participate in the different Technical Committees and roadmaps, shared with HE, where the multi-annual and annual strategic priorities are discussed and the specific topics for future calls are drafted. In collaboration with the European Commission, this work, which lasts approximately one year, leads to the elaboration of the Annual Work Plans, which are translated into calls for public proposals.
It is in this annual recurrence process as well as in other activities of the association such as participation in technical conferences or establishing synergies with other associations where several people from the FHa share their time and knowledge with the European community.
For example, Guillermo Figueruelo, head of the Strategic Area at FHa, was appointed more than four years ago as a member of the HER Board and leader of the Hydrogen Valleys Technical Committee, positions to which he was re-elected for the second time at the last HER General Assembly, held last June in Budapest.
So, not only do they collaborate in the execution of projects, but also in the tasks that go beyond that, they are involved in the route that seeks to reduce CO2 emissions into the environment. The fusion of hydrogen experts with the entities that lead the roadmaps is a key mechanism to materialise ideas and move from theory to practice through concrete projects.
FHa hopes that the relationship with the Clean Hydrogen Partnership will continue to be of benefit in contributing to the European goal of climate neutrality by producing perceptible and measurable results for the development and expansion of hydrogen applications.
