An e-Ata 12 Hydrogen is neatly parked near Belval’s blast furnaces, once the heart of Luxembourg’s steel industry. The Karsan, purchased by Sales, runs on green hydrogen: five cylinders with a total capacity of 1,510 litres of hydrogen--placed above the bus for safety reasons--which give this little technological gem a range of 550 kilometres.
The Turkish manufacturer sent a small delegation to ensure that the bus would have no problems on the day of the of the Luxembourg Hydrogen Valley (LuxHyVal). The project targets the potential production of green hydrogen in Bascharage, southern Luxembourg, starting in 2026. The aim is to produce up to 1,750kg of green hydrogen per day.
The six-megawatt electrolyser at the heart of the project, which will use only renewable energy, is due to be built in the Bascharage industrial park. Useful to Sales-Lentz, Tice and industrialists such as Ceratizit and the SMS--Paul Wurth group, the project should serve as a direct model for replicating valleys in central Europe (Czech Republic) and eastern Europe (Ukraine), contributing to the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ emissions reduction targets (cutting EU emissions by at least 55% by 2030) and helping to rebuild Ukraine.
Eight of the €39m needed to complete the project will be provided by the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, the European Union’s public-private partnership supporting research and innovation in hydrogen technologies, as well as by contributions from industrial partners. The rest will have to be found by the end of the year.
A question of sovereignty
Ten years after the first European initiative on hydrogen technologies, Luxembourg has brought together 17 partners in this research project designed to learn, understand and adjust policies and infrastructure for the future. This is one of 74 European projects, according to the progress report presented on Friday 14 June by the European Commission. The number is not that large, points out industry federation Fedil boss . “There are many projects that don’t seem very realistic and we are one of the few to bring all the right partners around the table.”
“We’ve been working for months to get ready to launch,” explains Encevo CEO . “It’s a question of economics and financing. We’re still working on these issues. We have already secured funding from the Horizon Europe programme for several months. We’re still among the first movers, but we need to move quickly to stay there. The value of the project lies in the fact that a large interconnected hydrogen system does not exist today, nor will it exist in the next five years. We will have to go through this decentralised stage. And if, in Luxembourg, we want to retain our competitiveness, our skills and also prospects for industry and long-distance transport, this is essential. We need to keep Luxembourg in the game and learn how to manage such a system, know what laws we’ll need, how to get public support... It’s a learning curve.”
“This is a very important project if we are to stay in the game,” added economy minister (DP), who had praised the work done during the previous legislature by (LSAP), then economy minister, and Claude Turmes (déi Gréng), energy minister, both of whom were in the room on Monday morning. “We cannot rely exclusively on imports and connections to other networks. In fact, the issue of connectivity is still before the energy council. How do you build pipelines between different countries? How do you connect one country to another? Of course, when I talk to another energy minister, the first answer is always: ‘We are in the process of preparing the connections within our country.’ We’ve tabled the bill to encourage investment in opex and capex, and we're moving quite quickly.”
A fairly long timescale
“What’s also very important is that people understand this subject and understand the economic dynamics. This is important for our engineers. In ten years, the number of students taking up engineering studies has fallen by 50%. We’re going to have to look after ourselves, train our own engineers and not expect to rely on others for ever,” added the rector of the University of Luxembourg, , “This project is a great way of getting our students involved, with visits to companies.”
“We will need hydrogen to meet the EU’s emission reduction targets, and with LuxHyVal we are trying to make concrete progress towards a sustainable and cleaner future,” said Bradley Ladewig, project coordinator and holder of the Paul Wurth Chair in Energy Process Engineering. “Building large-scale industrial infrastructure takes time and effort: we need to start now.”
The 17 partners
The LuxHyVal project consortium includes: the University of Luxembourg, Paul Wurth, Encevo, Enovos, LuxEnergie, Green Power Storage Solutions (GPSS), Ceratizit, LuxMobility, Sales-Lentz, Syndicat Tice and the Luxembourg Institute of Science & Technology (List) in Luxembourg, as well as the University of Bordeaux, France; IZES gGmbH (Germany); R2M Solution (Spain); Prague University of Chemistry and Technology (Czech Republic); King Danylo University (Ukraine); and the University of New South Wales (Australia).
This article was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.