To prevent catastrophic climate change, we must rapidly shift to low carbon, renewable energies. Yet, 65% of Europe’s energy demand is still met by natural gas and other fossil fuels. Hydrogen provides solutions to several energy and climate problems. Geological hydrogen storage, like today’s natural gas storage, is needed to store variable renewable energies and flexibly provide green hydrogen mobility, industry and residential uses. HYPSTER aims to demonstrate the industrial-scale operation of cyclic H2 storage in salt caverns to support the emergence of the hydrogen energy economy in Europe in line with overall Hydrogen Europe road-mapping. The specific objectives are to: •Define relevant cyclic tests to be performed based on modelling and the needs of emerging hydrogen regions across Europe •Demonstrate the viable operation of H2 cyclic storage for the full range of use-cases of emerging European hydrogen regions •Assess the economic feasibility of large-scale cyclic H2 storage to define the roadmap for future replication across the EU •Assess the risks and environmental impacts of H2 cyclic storage in salt caverns and provide guidelines for safety, regulations and standards •Commit at least 3 companies to using the hydrogen storage and 3 potential sites to replicate the cyclic hydrogen storage elsewhere in Europe on a commercial-scale by the end of the project HYPSTER will pave the way towards replication with the target to go below 1€/kg for H2 storage cost for the potential 40 TWh salt cavern storage sites in Europe. The project coordinator STORENGY will massively invest for the upscaling of Europe’s first large-scale, cyclic salt cavern in operation by 2025 and 3 more targeted by 2030. HYPSTER brings together 9 European partners including 2 RTOs for technology development, and 6 industries including 2 SME, plus 1 public-private cluster association to ensure maximum dissemination and uptake of HYPSTER results.

Despite considerable support for the hydrogen mobility sector, there remains low take-up of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and vehicle sales remain low. This is a significant issue for the commercialisation of the sector, as whilst sales volumes are low, vehicle production costs and prices remain high. The lack of demand for hydrogen also damages the business case for investment in early hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS). The ZEFER project proposes a solution to this issue. ZEFER will demonstrate viable business cases for captive fleets of FCEVs in operations which can realise value from hydrogen vehicles, for example by intensive use of vehicles and HRS, or by avoiding pollution charges in city centres with applications where the refuelling characteristics of FCEVs suit the duty cycles of the vehicles. ZEFER aims to drive sales of FCEVs in these applications to other cities, thereby increasing sales volumes of FCEVs and improving the business case for HRS serving these captive fleets. ZEFER will deploy 180 FCEVs in Paris, Brussels and London. 170 FCEVs will be operated as taxi or private hire vehicles, and the remaining 10 will be used by the police. The vehicle customers are all partners in the project, so that deployments will occur quickly, (the majority of vehicles will be deployed by the end of 2018) and FCEV mileage will be accumulated rapidly (in Paris and Brussels mileages will be over 90,000 km/year; and in London mileages will be over 40,000 km/year). These applications mean that vehicle performance will be tested to the limit, allowing a demonstration of the technical readiness of new generation FCEVs for high usage applications. The vehicles will be supported by existing and planned HRS. ZEFER will complement these ambitious deployments with robust data collection, analysis of the business cases and technical performance of the deployments. A targeted dissemination campaign will aim to replicate the business cases across Europe.

REVIVE will significantly advance the state of development of fuel cell refuse trucks, by integrating fuel cell powertrains into 15 vehicles and deploying them in 8 sites across Europe. The project will deliver substantial technical progress by integrating fuel cell systems from three major suppliers and developing effective hardware and control strategies to meet highly demanding refuse truck duty cycles. Specific work on standardisation will ensure that the lessons learned are applicable to the full range of OEMs supplying vehicles into the European market, helping to accelerate the introduction of next generation products. In parallel, the demonstration activities will greatly raise awareness of the viability of fuel cells as a solution to demanding heavy duty vehicle uses (and raise public awareness of hydrogen mobility more generally due to the visibility of the trucks). A successful demonstration of fuel cell trucks will have substantial impacts beyond the technical progress delivered by the project itself, as it will enable public authorities to continue implementing bold decarbonisation strategies by providing clear evidence that viable zero emissions solutions will exist for all vehicle types in the medium term. The project will also support the wider rollout of hydrogen mobility by introducing a further source of hydrogen demand that can improve the economics of existing and future refuelling station deployments, in turn facilitating the rollout of other vehicle types.

H2Haul will develop and demonstrate a total of 16 new heavy-duty (26–44t) hydrogen fuel cell trucks in real-world commercial operations. The project includes two major European truck manufacturers (IVECO and VDL), who will build on existing small-scale prototyping activities to develop new zero-emission trucks tailored to the needs of European customers, mainly in large supermarket fleets. The vehicles will be standardised as far as possible to help encourage the development of the European supply chain. New high-capacity hydrogen refuelling stations will be installed to provide reliable, low carbon hydrogen supplies to the trucks. Most of the stations will be publicly accessible and this project will thus support the uptake of a broader range of hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. The vehicles and infrastructure will be thoroughly tested via an extended trial with the high-profile end users over several years. The comprehensive data monitoring and analysis tasks will ensure that the technical, economic, and environmental performance of the hardware is assessed, and that the business case for further deployment of heavy-duty fuel cell trucks is developed. The scope and ambition of this innovative project will create a range of valuable information that will be disseminated widely amongst truck operators, representatives of the retail sector, policy makers, and the broader hydrogen industry. Hence, H2Haul will validate the ability of hydrogen fuel cell trucks to provide zero-emission mobility in heavy-duty applications and lay the foundations for commercialisation of this sector in Europe during the 2020s.

C4U is a holistic interdisciplinary project involving the collaboration with 8 European countries and Mission Innovation Countries, Canada, China and USA aimed at addressing all the essential elements required for the optimal integration of CO2 capture in the iron and steel industry as part of the CCUS chain. This spans demonstration of highly efficient CO2 capture technologies at TRL7 designed for optimal integration into an iron and steel plant and detailed consideration of the safety, environmental, societal, policy and business aspects for successful incorporation into the North Sea Port CCUS cluster. The above involves the elevation from TRL5 to TRL7 two highly energy-efficient high-temperature solid-sorbent CO2 capture technologies for decarbonising blast furnace gas and other carbon containing gases. In addition, the C4U project assesses the societal readiness and analyses the optimal design for full-scale integration of such technologies in industrial plants operated by the world’s largest iron and steel manufacturer, ArcelorMittal. For the first time, in combination, these two technologies will target up to 90% of the total emissions from the steel plant that come from a variety of sources. Using a whole system approach, we account for the impact of the quality of the captured CO2 on the safety and operation of the CO2 pipeline transportation and storage infrastructure whilst exploring utilisation opportunities based on integration into the North Sea Port CCUS industrial cluster. A candidate for the fourth Union list of Projects of Common Interest2, CO2TransPorts aims to establish the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the large-scale capture, transport and storage of CO2 from three of the most important ports in Europe; North Sea, Rotterdam and Antwerp and to transport and store up to 10 Mt/yr of CO2 per year.