At the beginning of July 2019, the HyStarter tender was decided. Nine regions have been awarded the contract and will receive support for their entry into hydrogen and fuel cell technology as part of the HyLands overarching funding project. In the future, their concepts will also serve as a blueprint to inspire other regions.

138 expressions of interest were received after the first call by project manager Nadine Hölzinger, managing director of Spilett new technologies GmbH. Hölzinger, Anke Schmidt and Julia Epp of New Urban Transport Solutions (Nuts One GmbH, a spin-off of the mobility service provider Choice) judged each individual submission on the basis of six criteria specified by the National Organisation for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology (NOW). In order to enable an even more detailed differentiation, NOW introduced further criteria which also took into account the starting level of the respective region, i.e. whether experience had already been gained with H₂ and FC technology.

The final decision was taken by representatives of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI), the programme company NOW GmbH and the project executing agency Jülich. Due to the high number of applications, nine regions were finally selected instead of the original six, and each region is now advised on the organisation and content of the programme for a period of twelve months. Their distribution shows that attempts have been made to consider different regions and also different subject areas – from North to South, from wind power to lignite, from small and medium-sized enterprises to Europe-wide networking. NOW and the project partners were particularly pleased about the great interest and the large number of very good applications.

Regions Workshop Series

The rejections to the unselected applicants were sent out as soon as possible, with the indication that it was still possible to apply to HyExperts, the second round within the HyLand project. In addition, further information events are to be offered as a follow-up to this application procedure so that the preparatory work was not in vain. There will be a series of regional workshops in 2020. NOW spokesman Tilman Wilhelm told H2-international: “With this, we want to give regions that have not had a chance at HyStarter or HyExperts due to the very high demand a tangible opportunity to stay on the ball when it comes to the topic of hydrogen. The workshops will take place on site at the host community. In addition, we are continuing our webinars, which also give local authorities the opportunity to obtain further information on specific topics

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read more in H2-international February 2020