BalticSeaH2 will establish the first, largescale interregional hydrogen valley in Europe. BalticSeaH2 will build a main cross-border Hydrogen Valley between Finland and Estonia and connects it with local valleys in different countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The ultimate goal is to develop an international hydrogen economy and markets that work optimally both from the technical, economic and environmental perspectives across country borders in the Northern Europe, more specifically around the Baltic Sea. The project will develop, scale and demonstrate hydrogen use in production, storage and distribution, and in Use Cases in different sectors from industry, mobility and energy. The learnings from the cross-border build-up of a hydrogen economy will be shared with specifically identified Connected Valleys and replicated across borders between them, but furthermore, shared to boost replication and initiate new hydrogen valleys across Europe. The cross border Main Valley is to be located in the region of Southern Finland – Estonia. These regions are already connected with a natural gas pipeline, transmission cable and maritime operations and the Transmission System Operators (TSO) in both countries collaborate actively in the further development of the cross border infrastructures. The cross border nature of the Main Valley makes is possible to develop cross border markets and businesses for green hydrogen production, transport and use from the start, including also development of cross border neighbouring pricing zones for renewable electricity to reach optimized system, market and business designs for an efficient hydrogen economy.

LocalRES project will deploy innovative local energy systems driven by renewable energy communities for a socially fair energy transformation that puts renewable energy into the hands of communities and people. LocalRES will deliver new digital tools that will boost the expected structural change in the current energy system at different levels: 1) generation, increasing the number of small power producers of renewable energy; 2) market, creating local energy markets that enable prosumers to trade energy volumes of their choosing within local communities; 3) distribution, establishing a multidirectional energy flow and promoting REC driven energy services, and 4) consumers, empowering consumers to be active and participating in the energy system and the design of their own Renewable Energy Communities (REC). The main objective of LocalRES is to demonstrate at TRL8 innovative local energy systems in a sector coupling approach, which will be able to interconnect and optimise the joint operation of different energy vectors (electricity, heating, mobility, etc.) by maximising the RES contribution and enhancing the energy system flexibility and supply security. The focus is on the renewable energy communities as main actors for leading the structural change in the current energy system towards the decarbonisation of the local energy systems based on an integrated multidirectional flow approach and prosumers, allowing to maximize the replicability and upscale the potential of the decentralized solutions developed in the project. The LocalRES solutions promote a secure, sustainable, competitive and affordable energy supply for everyone.