Lindner: “The Ruhr Metropolis must act unitedly!”

CDU SME Association visited h2-netzwerk-ruhr

At the invitation of the Chairman of the Association of Small and Medium-sized Businesses and Economic Association of the CDU (MIT), Recklinghausen District Association, Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Noll, Chairman of the Zollverein Foundation, and Bodo Klimpel, Mayor of Haltern am See, visited h2-netzwerk-ruhr e.V. at its office in Herten on Tuesday, September 8, 2020.

h2-netzwerk-ruhr was represented by its chairman Volker Lindner and by member companies Concorde Blue, Hycon, and Hyref. A representative of Motorworld was also invited.

Mayor Bodo Klimpel noted at the beginning of the discussion that the Hydrogen Application Center in Herten is one of the few topics that is not controversial in the ongoing municipal election campaign. Klimpel: “Everyone agrees that this technology must be promoted.”

Prof. Karl-Herbert Klug, Managing Director of Hycon, demanded that the Ruhr region must create a domestic market for hydrogen. Prof. Klug explained: “We have considerable potential in the Ruhr region; we must leverage it and also need the large companies to do so. They must bring the SMEs along.”

Possible Location for Innovative Mobility

Marc Baumüller, Managing Director of Motorworld, dared to look into the future: “Perhaps the Herten location, with Motorworld and the Hydrogen Application Center, can develop into a hub for innovative mobility.”

Klemens Höbing from Hyref complained that in many places in the Ruhr region, mine gas is simply released into the atmosphere, although fuel cells could be powered by it. As exhaust gas, it is often as harmful as CO2.

For Sebastian Flahs, Managing Director of Concord Blue GmbH, it is the established companies in the Ruhr region that sometimes make market entry difficult for newcomers. The sale of heat from the planned “Blue Tower” gasification plant was not economically viable with the prices offered by the established district heating providers. This also jeopardizes the production of 2,000 tons of green hydrogen per year, whose production costs, in his estimation, are lower than those of an electrolysis plant.

Build a Value Chain

Prof. Hans-Peter Noll, who is aiming for a prominent role in Ruhr regional politics in the current election campaign, declared his willingness to address and advance the topic of hydrogen in his intended role in the Ruhr Parliament. Bodo Klimpel assured him of the support of the Emscher-Lippe region. The participants agreed: “It would be important to build a value chain for hydrogen technology” (Prof. Klug).

The best way to start this would be through projects. And these should not be research projects, of which there are enough. Implementation projects are needed. Volker Lindner summarized the visit by stating: “The political forces in the Ruhr region must unite more. Hydrogenics is a company from Gladbeck. They build fuel cells for Alstom trains – for Hesse, for Lower Saxony, and for Italy, but not for North Rhine-Westphalia. The Ruhr region missed the chance to become a pioneer of modern technology because in the first tenders, the new trains were not allowed to be more expensive than diesel trains.”
Lindner also warned that competition among all parties threatens hydrogen technology. “We can only compete with better-positioned regions if the Ruhr Metropolis, with its five million inhabitants, acts unitedly.”

Title photo: From left to right, the participants of the MIT discussion posed in front of the hydrogen tank with “Corona distance”: Matthias Müller (independent mayoral candidate for Herten), Thorsten Jakob (MIT), Prof. Hans-Peter Noll (Zollverein Foundation), Sebastian Flahs (Concorde Blue), Prof. Karl-Herbert Klug (Hycon), Bodo Klimpel (Mayor of Haltern am See), Klemens Höbing (Hyref), Marc Baumüller (Motorworld), Volker Lindner (h2-netzwerk-ruhr).