The first meeting of a new National Association Working Group within Hydrogen Europe took place

Yesterday the first meeting of a new National Association Working Group within Hydrogen Europe took place. The aim of the meeting was to jointly form goals and discuss areas of work of the working group.

Among the priorities are three areas:

  • Identifying funding opportunities;
  • Regular updates on legislation both on EU and national level, including analysis of the forthcoming EU directives; update on projects and IPCEI; coordination for policy work and lobbying;
  • Networking opportunities.

President of the Energy Association “Ukrainian Hydrogen Council” Oleksandr Riepkin took part in the meeting and proposed to initiate the preparation of an annual report on the activities of national associations.

“National associations have extensive information on industry, initiatives, regulation, what is going on in government and so on. It will be useful to have all this information in one document, where you can see what is happening in the neighbors, what projects are being implemented. For example, Ukraine is actively working on the development of hydrogen energy and there are many initiatives that we need to support by ourselves or in partnership with EU neighborhood programs.”

In addition, Oleksandr Riepkin also drew attention to the need for cooperation between countries on ways of transporting hydrogen.

“As you know, Ukraine and Germany have launched an energy partnership, which includes the field of hydrogen energy. One of the important issues is to determine the routes of hydrogen transportation from Ukraine to Germany. The simplest and cheapest way is to use a gas transmission system. However, there is no direct pipeline between our countries, so it is necessary to involve, for example, Poland, Slovakia or Romania. But no one knows what the situation is with the gas pipeline in these countries. That is why it is now important to take into account the establishment of partnerships between countries on this issue and to create new hydrogen routes”.