North Sea Hydrogen Ports and Maritime Community (NS HyMaP) Information Bulletin No 7 is Available

                                                NS HyMaP INFORMATION BULLETIN No.7

                                                                      3 August 2020

 This extract is the Introduction to the latest Information Bulletin.  If you would like to receive the full Bulletin – contact mailto: [email protected]

            About This Bulletin

This is the seventh NS HyMaP Information Bulletin.    A Members’ Steering Group has been formed to draw up proposals for the future development of the Community and, as the Group will not report until September, free membership of NS HyMaP has been extended until the end of September 2020.  These discussions will include proposals to make NS HyMaP a more permanent and influential organisation.

European Policy Solutions provides the Secretariat for NS HyMaP and we welcome both news articles and opinion pieces. If you would like to submit a piece in future,  please  let us know at [email protected]

The last Bulletin was the longest that we have produced and the current one is the shortest.  It reflects the proximity of the holiday period and the significant progress made in the development of national and EU Strategies in the past three months.

The Bulletin begins by looking at the work being done to develop NS HyMaP.  A Steering Group of Members has been set up to look at the way the Information Exchange can be extended and how the Community can be developed once the initial period of membership ends at the end of September.  The Bulletin outlines the decisions made in the first Steering Group meeting.

We then move on to look at the outcome of the historic European Council meeting held in July.  The meeting spanned five days and included meetings deep into the night but there was a determination to reach decisions and there were crucial decisions made on both the Recovery Package (Next Generation EU) and the EU Budget 2021-2027.  This is not the final part of the process as both Decisions have to be agreed by the European Parliament but it is a huge step forward.

The last Bulletin looked at the first Call for the EU Innovation Fund which opened on 3 July 2020 and closes on 29 October 2020.   DG Clima has now held a webcast on the Call and this is reported in depth.  There is a great deal of interest in the Fund and the webcast had over 400 participants watching.  The webcast cleared up issues about the eligibility of hydrogen and the maritime sector in the Call.   Commission officials said in the webcast that applications could cover “the whole value chain of renewable energy “and specifically mentioned the use of green hydrogen in inland waterways.  This clarification is also seen In the Application Form where hydrogen is included in the energy intensive sectors part of the form.  Questions about the eligibility of clean shipping and maritime projects were also tabled in the Q&A section and it was again confirmed that projects using renewable energy were eligible.  Ferries were also mentioned in this context

Webinars continue to be organised in great numbers but, with the holiday season, they are declining in number.  There were two interesting webinars organised by gasworld.tv and H2 View.  They included an informative contribution from Bart Biebuyck which built on some of the issues in the EU Hydrogen Strategy such as the formation and function of the Clean Hydrogen Alliance.  He also mentioned a Hydrogen Week to be held in Brussels between the 24^th and 27^th November 2020.

The second webinar in the series looked at the scaling up of the hydrogen industry and hydrogen applications and contained influential contributions from David Hart from E4tech and Randy MacEwan from Ballard Power Systems.

Next publication date:  7 September 2020.