Place and time were chosen on purpse: To mark the end of the coal mining industry in Germany, the h2-netzwerk-ruhr celebrated its 10th anniversary at the former coal mining site AufEwald in Herten with a large experts’ workshop and a ceremony with around 150 participants at both events.
The opening event of the anniversary was the specialist workshop on “Hydrogen for public transport & commercial vehicles in the Ruhr metropolis … why now?”. The top-class lectures dealt with the perspectives that the hydrogen and fuel cell technologies offer today and tomorrow for the Ruhr area. The unanimous tenor was: “Energy change without hydrogen is not possible.” Because renewable electricity from wind power and photovoltaics must be stored – in large quantities this is possible with hydrogen. Ideally, hydrogen is produced from green electricity by electrolysis – and can be stored centrally or decentrally and transported loss-free via pipelines. The experts who spoke on the topic at the workshop were
- Thorsten Herbert, NOW GmbH, Head of Transport and Infrastructure Division
- -Dr. Frank Koch, EnergyAgency.NRW
- Dr. Michael Weber, h2-netzwerk-ruhr e.V./ EnergyAgency.NRW
- Dr. Philipp Dietrich, H2 Energy AG (Switzerland), CEO
- Jens Conrad, Head of Alternative Drive Systems, Regionalverkehr Köln GmbH
- Andreas Meyer, Head of Bus Technology, WSW mobil GmbH
- Carsten Stabenau, Innovation Management, Westnetz GmbH
- Peter Krichel, SPNV Planning, Transport Association Rhine-Ruhr AöR
The companies exhibiting fuel cell driven vehicles consisted of Wirtschaftsbetriebe Duisburg – AöR, the Centre for Fuel Cell Technology (ZBT), representatives of Air Liquide as well as the car dealer Glückauf, represented by the management Dietlinde Stüben-Endres, who presented a hydrogen-powered vehicle on site. The workshop was followed by an opportunity to visit the vehicles and the local filling station.
Regional media outlet WDR took the occasion of the anniversary with a large contribution, which can be found here, to report on the subject of hydrogen-powered mobility.
Grand ceremony with top-class speeches
Christoph Dammermann, State Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitisation and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia.
In his speech during the following ceremony, Christoph Dammermann, State Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitisation and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia, emphasised the high potential of hydrogen technology and the active efforts of the state government to promote this technology in NRW. Dr. Ulrich Bünger of Ludwig-Bülkow-Systemtechnik GmbH (LBST), an independent technology and strategy consultancy, spoke about the state of the art in this area worldwide. Prof. Dr. Bernd Kriegesmann, President of the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, spoke about obstacles to innovation and strategies for overcoming these obstacles. Volker Lindner, chairman of the h2-netzwerk-ruhr, used the festive occasion to look back on the ten years of work of the association and outlined the goals of its future work in a speech.
