Fuel Cell and Hydrogen (FCH) technologies hold great promise for energy and transport applications from the perspective of meeting Europe’s energy, environmental and economic challenges. The European Union is committed to transforming its transport and energy systems as part of a future low carbon economy. It is recognized that FCH technologies have an important role in this transformation and they are part of the Strategic Energy Technologies Plan (SET) Plan adopted by the European Council. This is in line with the European Commission’s (EC) Communication “Energy for a Changing World – An Energy Policy for Europe”, the goals of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Strategic Transport Technology Plan.Hydrogen vehicle technology is commercializing rapidly, while the increasing demand for skilled labor in this field contrasts with the lack of training programmes provided to technicians. Denmark is, as far as known, the only country in the world that has nationwide network of hydrogen filling stations (10 stations). Denmark is one of the first countries to get access to the new fuel cell vehicles from Toyota and Hyundai. Thus, Denmark is leading in implementing fuel cell vehicles - and also a leader in system knowledge.The increasing number of hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles will lead to growth in employment in service and maintenance of these vehicles and thus an increasing demand for skilled labor in the field.Education and training in the fuel cells and hydrogen sector is critical for the current and future workforce and thereby supports indirectly the commercialization of the technology. Knowledgeable and capable workforce that understands the functioning of both technology and underlying fundamental processes, but knows also about obstacles and technological restrictions, is essential for successful development, planning and implementation of FCH technology.It is widely accepted that job opportunities for technicians and workers within the fuel cells and hydrogen (FC & H2) applications will emerge in the short term, but there is also a lack of appropriate training for technicians.Hydrogen vehicle technology is commercializing rapidly, while the increasing demand for skilled labor in this field contrasts with the lack of training programmes provided to technicians. This highlights the need for transferable skills and a common training approach for this new sector. It has become fundamental to share European knowledge and experiences to participate in the creation of an appropriate training in order to develop excellence covering hydrogen vehicle maintenance.It is the project purpose to gather experiences and knowledge from three European countries (each of them owning an area of excellence in the FCH technology) and convert it in a training programme for future technicians of FCH vehicles. The project's expected results are: O1: Report: Mapping the necessary content of the curricula and compendium, explore the posibilities for integration of the training programme in the already existing study programmesO2: Training curriculumO3: CompendiumO4: Description of training sessionsO5: Preparation for accreditationThere will be two training sessions during the project period: a training sessions for trainers and a training sessions for FC technicians. The main target groups of the project are:- Auto mechanics (car and trucks);- Organizations providing professional training courses (including VET organizations);- Municipalities interested in introducing i.e. FCH buses;- FCH vehicle manufacturers;- Car dealers.- Auto workshops.

Power-to-Gas (PtG) is an innovative energy concept which will help to incorporate flexibility into future energy systems, increasingly characterised by the use of fluctuating renewable electricity. One PtG option, dubbed Power-to Hydrogen (PtH2) is to produce hydrogen from water electrolysis applying cheap renewable electricity in times of surplus and providing it for re-electrification in times of electricity shortages or to other hydrogen end-users, whatever promises the best business opportunities. It has been shown by recent studies that these can be best exploited, if PtH2 simultaneously supplies hydrogen to more than one end-use sector. The combination of electricity and mobility sectors has been earmarked as being specifically relevant, promising high utilization of the electrolysers and hence possible revenues. It is the purpose of the HyBalance project to demonstrate the concept of multi-sectoral hydrogen end-use in the renewable energy friendly environment of wind-rich Denmark at Megawatt scale with a PtH2 plant. A group of partners representing all steps along the renewable electricity to hydrogen to end-use value chain have convened to develop a PtH2 demonstration plant. This plant will be designed for combined operation providing both grid balancing services and hydrogen for industry and as a fuel for transport in the community of Hobro in the Danish province of Nordjylland. The plant will be used to demonstrate its feasibility to identifying potential revenue streams from PtH2 under today’s and future constraints (regulatory environment, state-of-art of key technologies), simultaneously applying most recent developments for hydrogen distribution and storage. Relevant applications in the hydrogen production site’s proximity are: hydrogen refuelling stations for fuel cell cars and buses in Hobro, local industry and, as perspective, hydrogen storage in salt caverns located in Hvornum and Lille Torup.

The overall objective of the Nordic hydrogen energy valley (CONVEY) project is to establish and demonstrate a hydrogen closed-loop ecosystem in the Hirtshals Port (HP), Northern Denmark, by deploying an innovative, economically viable and renewable energy system (RES) infrastructure. Annually, 550 tons of green hydrogen will be produced via using the renewable electricity (32,160MWh / year) generated by the windmills located in the industrial area of the port. Efficient downstream management of both hydrogen and electrolysis’ by-products, i.e. excess heat, oxygen, will be enabled by an integrated and synergetic sector coupling, involving the greater value chain of the port. The CONVEY valley mainly constitutes of i) the renewable (wind) energy production site at the Hirtshals port site, that powers ii) a 4MW hydrogen production facility, also located at HP’s premises, iii) the pipeline infrastructure for fast and climate-friendly H2, heat and O2 distribution (retrofitting of existing gas grid and new builds) and iv) the initial three off-takers, comprising road transport logistics and food industry for both primary production through aquaculture (O2 and excess heat for marine nutrition production) and biorefinery for food ingredients (H2 for powering enzymatic hydrolysis process technology). Overall, CONVEY will unlock unseen value for the Hirtshals region and beyond by 2050, i) economically: accumulated revenues of €23.86bn and €17.89bn for the H2 system and RES operators, respectively, as well as accumulated savings of €1.70bn, €471m, €877m and €640m respectively for the H2 transport off-takers, as well as food industry off-takers of H2, O2 and heat energy; ii) environmentally: accumulated overall savings (transport and food industry sectors) of 75.34 megatons (Mt) of CO2-equivalents (CO2-e) by displacing fossil fuel driven activities; iii) socially: 825 and 30,285 accumulated full-time and temporary jobs created for operating and installing the systems.

We are in the middle of an energy transition when it comes to reaching Europe’s Green Deal challenges by 2050, providing a great opportunity for renewable energy to strive for more established, more innovative and more embedded initiatives such as the Centres of Vocational Excellence. In the European Green Deal it is stated that: “Renewable energy sources will have an essential role. Increasing offshore wind production will be essential, building on regional cooperation between Member States.The EU goal of climate neutrality by 2050 requires 25 times increase in offshore wind installed capacity. Already in the next 10 years the volume of offshore wind in Europe needs to rise from 25 GW to over 110 GW. This given fact will have huge on the requirements for skilled personnel, needs for harmonization and need for international cooperation. For the planning & installation phase of an offshore wind farm EnBW estimates 25 Full Time Employees (FTE) per MW installed. If Europe have 110 GW installed by 2030, this means 85.000 MW new installed capacity the next 9 years, which means more than 2 million new FTE in the planning & installation phase. For Operation & Maintenance EnBW estimates 1.2 FTE/MW, giving 102 000 new employees working the whole period of operation (25 – 30 years). As we know there will be a considerable shift in the work force due to mobility, the number of trained and reskilled personnel will be even higher. What are the difficulties and possible solutions to this issue:1.While wind power is essential to the climate fight, wind alone will not suffice to meet the United Nations Paris Agreement’s goal of avoiding a 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature. Decarbonizing all sectors of the economy, including heavy industry and transportation, requires passion, it requires sector coupling of industry, thus cooperation between industry leaders and above all new green skills. 2.Skills obtained at a young age no longer suffice to last an entire career,

HEAVENN is a large-scale demo project addressing the requirements of the call, by bringing together core elements: production, distribution, storage and local end-use of H2 into a fully-integrated and functioning “H2 valley” (H2V), that can serve as a blueprint for replication across Europe and beyond. The proposed concept is based on the deployment & integration of existing & planned project clusters across 6 locations in the Northern Netherlands, namely Eemshaven, Delfzijl, Zuidwending, Emmen, Hoogeveen and Groningen, with a total initial investment of 88 M EUR. The main goal is to make use of green hydrogen across the entire value chain, while developing replicable business models for wide-scale commercial deployment of H2 across the entire regional energy system. HEAVENN aims to maximize the integration of abundant RES resource available in the region, both onshore (wind and solar) and offshore wind, using H2 as: (i) a storage medium to manage intermittent and constrained renewable inputs in the electricity grid; and (ii) an energy vector for further integration of renewable inputs and decarbonisation across other energy sectors beyond electricity, namely industry, heat and transportation. The project facilitates the deployment of 11 HFC end-user applications across the project clusters, while ensuring the interconnection between them. This will be delivered by facilitating the deployment of key transport & distribution gas infrastructure to deliver green H2 from supply to the end-user sites. In this way HEAVENN will demonstrate the coupling the existing electricity and gas infrastructures at scale, to decarbonize industry, power, transport and heat across the entire region. The scale of the deployment delivered by HEAVENN is sufficient to achieve by itself significant economies of scale & improved business models across the entire value chain.