Federal government launches second round of the HyLand competition

Ten new municipalities will be honoured

The HyLand competition is entering its second round: Ten new municipalities and regions will be honoured this year as HyStarters. The application deadline started on Tuesday, March 16, 2021.

With the HyLand competition, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) offers regions in Germany the opportunity to design holistic concepts or implement them directly and thus achieve the local rollout of hydrogen and fuel cell technology. This takes place in three stages, in order to meet the regions where they are in terms of their previous experience.

In the Ruhr metropolis, two HyExperts projects are already underway in the city of Essen and in the Emscher-Lippe region (Recklinghausen district and the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Bottrop). And if possible, these two projects are to be transferred to the third stage, the HyPerformers .

HyStarter regions are supported and accompanied by experienced consultants in developing regionally integrated concepts for introducing hydrogen and fuel cell technology in transport. The funding is intended to specifically motivate municipalities and regions to develop initial ideas for integrated hydrogen concepts, to specify and elaborate plans, or to implement these plans with support from the Federal Government. A HyLand network will ensure the exchange of experience among all regions.

The application as a HyStarter region takes place via an expression of interest procedure. Local authorities, municipal companies as well as companies, associations or citizens’ initiatives can express their interest for their municipality and/or region. Registration is open at www.now-gmbh.de/hystarter from Tuesday, March 16, 2021 until Friday, May 14, 2021.

HyStarters receive organisational and content-related advice for around one year, build a local stakeholder landscape (politics, municipal utilities, industry, commerce, society) and develop initial concept ideas on the topics of hydrogen and fuel cells based on renewable energies in transport, but also in the areas of heat, electricity and storage. Following the positive experiences of the first round of the competition, the network activities and support for the regions will be continued and intensified by a consortium of companies – with conceptual and content-related support from NOW GmbH. The programme company NOW GmbH and Projektträger Jülich are responsible for organising and running the competition.

Title photo: flickr / Dennis Skley, “News”, License here