Developing the North Sea Hydrogen Valley Ports Project

The North Sea Hydrogen Ports and Maritime Community (NS HyMaP) is assisting the development of the North Sea Hydrogen Valley Ports project and plans to submit a full application to INTERREG North Sea by the end of June 2023.   The project will aim to develop  Hydrogen Valley Master Plans in, at least, four ports.  These are Bremen, Brest, Esbjerg and den Helder.

Hydrogen Valleys will develop regional hydrogen economies.  They cover multiple steps in the value chain from hydrogen production to storage, transport and off-take.  They demonstrate the versatility of hydrogen by supplying a number of sectors such as mobility, industry and energy and they will plan the large-scale deployment of hydrogen rather than a series of demonstration projects.

Port Hydrogen Valleys satisfy these criteria but the sectors targeted must include mobility in the maritime sector so that ports develop bunkering and transport facilities to service a wide range of hydrogen vessels.

The project will produce the following outputs :

• Individual Hydrogen Production Reports for each port hydrogen including governance structures and green H2 import/export potential for each port examined. Recommendations on NS H2 import an exports strategy.
• Agree a template for Port Hydrogen Valley Master Plans and individual Port Master Plans for each participating port.
• A Report looking at the challenges and barriers looking at the design of hydrogen vessels operating in ports and short sea shipping  and a concept design of at least three vessels.
• Bunkering plans for each Hydrogen Valley ports and recommendations for an NSR Bunkering Network.

The Programme  accepted the project’s Expression of Interest in July last year. The project will be submitted under the Better Governance priority of the North Sea Programme which will allow the project to look at solutions to the governance and market barriers that prevent the formation of Hydrogen Valleys.  There will be four Work packages:

• WP1 – Green Hydrogen Production including Import and Export in the NSR
• WP2 – Development and Implementation of Port Hydrogen Valley Master Plans
• WP3 – Development of Hydrogen Vessels including Short Sea Shipping
• WP4 – Bunkering Infrastructure.

The project partnership currently includes the Port of Esbjerg, Copenhagen Business School, City of Bremen,  The Institute of Ship Economics and Logistics (ISL) Bremen, North Netherlands North Development Agency, New Energy Coalition, CMB Tech, Nedstack and CIRCOE Normandy and the Port of Brest.

We are looking for ports, regional and local authorities and naval architects to join the projects and we are particularly looking for partners in Sweden and Flanders.  If you would like further details about the project and would like to join as a partner, please contact Jon Jordan at [email protected] or phone +44 1259 781404.