Christoph Burkard, Caroline Schäfer & Matthias v.d. Malsburg, © Region Fulda

During a media-effective ceremony on May 12th, 2022 at the event hotel Titanic on the Chausseestraße in Berlin, NOW GmbH together with German transport minister Volker Wissing cheerfully presented the funding decisions for the new HyStarter Regions and the participants in the second round of the HyExperts program. A good two years before, Martin Thaler, as the representative from the city of Fulda, likewise stood onstage in Berlin to accept funding from the federal transport minister, then Andreas Scheuer. It was 300,000, an outcome from the first call for HyExpert Regions. What has happened in the meantime? What is special about Hydrogen Region Fulda?
One thousand fuel cell trucks on the road by 2026, including service and refueling options for local and long-distance transport as well as buses, in East Hessen and the bordering regions is the ambitious goal of stakeholders in HyExpert Region Fulda. In a study within the corresponding program for hydrogen use in the transport sector in East Hessen, called HyWheels, commercial traffic flows in the region, possible locations for regenerative energy structures to produce green hydrogen, fueling station locations and the establishment of a management center were analyzed. At the same time, the first prototypes for fuel cell trucks were also presented.

The first preliminary result of this analysis was that four locations for hydrogen fueling stations in the district of Fulda could be considered: Hünfeld-Michelsrombach, Fulda-Nord, Eichenzell and Flieden. A multi-phase plan envisages the design and construction of the first two fueling stations and the deployment of 20 to 40 vehicles in 2023. The target of 1,000 vehicles with 10 to 15 fueling stations is to be reached by 2026. Suggested was also the creation of a central information and coordination office for hydrogen within the management organization Region Fulda.

Ten months after the end of the study, of course no fueling station has been built and no hydrogen truck is yet on the road. However, in the last call for tenders in January 2022, three investors applied to get funding for fueling stations in Hünfeld-Michelsrombach, Fulda-Nord and Eichenzell. A working group for hydrogen under the management of Region Fulda Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft mbH made sure that the applications did not have any competing overlap. To each of the applications was attached a page that references the other proposals. In this way, freight transport companies should be given maximum assurance of energy supply for their H2 vehicles.

Together, the submitted funding applications work out to a production of 500 tonnes of green hydrogen and 30 to 50 refuelings per day at three hydrogen fueling stations. If all the planned projects can be realized, the targets for year 2023/2024 set out in the HyWheels study will be exactly fulfilled.[…]

… Read this article to the end in the latest H2-International

Author: Christoph Burkard – Region Fulda Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft mbH