“Let’s refine renewable energies – we as an industry would be ready.” With these words Mai-Inken Knackfuß, Managing Director of watt_2.0, opened the New Energy Days, which took place from 21 to 24 March 2019 in Husum. The H2.0 conference was the prelude to this event. More than 120 participants came to the NordseeCongressCentrum to inform themselves about a green hydrogen economy in the regions. This was complemented by the public trade fair New Energy Home and the trade fair New Energy Expert, which brought both consumers and experts up to date in the energy sector with a total of around 90 exhibitors.

Jan Philipp Albrecht, the Minister for Energy Turnaround, Agriculture, Environment, Nature and Digitisation in Schleswig-Holstein, came to the exhibition grounds in a hydrogen bus. In his opening speech, he reported that the percentage share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption was 36 percent nationwide, compared with 156 percent in his state. Furthermore, the Statistics Office North had determined that in Schleswig-Holstein in 2016 around 19,000 people were employed in the field of renewable energies. At the same time, he made it clear: “Nobody wants to have wind turbines for them just to stand still.” For this reason, Albrecht said, the country would work to abolish discrimination and make use of existing potential.

The program of the H2.0 conference, which had been compiled by the industry association watt_2.0, subsequently offered a varied sequence of numerous exciting contributions, which were accompanied in the usual professional and entertaining way by the longstanding expert moderator Ulrich Walter. The progressive atmosphere that prevailed during the event is particularly noteworthy. For example, the conference topics often gave a round of applause when striking sentences fell and speakers criticized the political framework which is still missing. Even in the well-attended seminars, it was noticeable that the mostly expert listeners were almost greedy for new information. All in all, it turned out once again that the North Frisians are extremely open to renewable energies and do things without much feather reading. To do, not just to snap about it, that was the motto here.

A highlight was the presentation of a total of eight German hydrogen regions, which presented their activities as well as their visions of the future in the H₂ and FC sector within the framework of best-practice examples. The unanimous opinion of the regional representatives from Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein in the ensuing debate was that there was no competition between them, but that all were striving together in the same direction.

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read more in H2-international July 2019