Clean Hydrogen Partnership — 2023-03-14
News from Brussels
The H2Accelerate collaboration secured funding for two of their primary initiatives: the deployment of eight heavy-duty hydrogen refuelling stations under the Connecting Europe Facility and a 150 fuel cell truck project funded by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. These projects will enable trucks and refuelling equipment to be tested under real-world conditions, and are expected to be a crucial step towards the mass commercialisation of the technology.
H2Accelerate TRUCKS project will fund the deployment of 150 fuel cell trucks across Europe by the mid-to-late 2020s, allowing development of the technology towards series manufacturing of the vehicles by the three major OEMs in the second half of the decade.
Bart Biebuyck, Executive Director of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, said: “We are delighted to provide funding support to the H2Accelerate TRUCKS project, a flagship project which will pave the way for the commercialisation of Europe’s hydrogen trucking system. It is especially auspicious that these 150 vehicles deployed within this project will be supported by an expanding network of hydrogen refuelling stations, which will include the H2Accelerate Inaugural Station Deployment project that has been selected to receive EU funding support. Through both projects, we can witness first-hand how different funding programmes can work together to accelerate the realisation of a hydrogen trucking ecosystem in Europe.”
The trucks to be deployed in the first stage are expected to be either 4x2 or 6x2, with up to 44 tonne capacity and long ranges of at least 600km. The funding granted by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership of €30m will enable the coordinated roll-out of heavy-duty, zero-emission vehicles fuelled by green hydrogen, bringing zero emission targets for transport closer. The trucks will be deployed with trusted customers of the OEMs and tested in real world conditions over several years in order to demonstrate and assess their technical and economic performance.