Webinar: The Contribution of Regional Clusters and Hydrogen Valleys for a Sustainable Europe
ERIG opened its three-part webinar series on hydrogen for a sustainable European energy transition with a session held during European Sustainable Energy Week, under the theme of a clean, secure and competitive Energy Union. Hans Rasmusson, ERIG’s Secretary General, moderated a discussion that brought together speakers from four hydrogen projects across Europe, each making the case that regional clusters work best when they learn from one another rather than developing in isolation.
Why regional clusters matter
Horst Steinmüller, chair of ERIG’s Scientific Advisory Board and a representative of WIVA P&G, framed the discussion around defossilisation rather than decarbonisation. Electrifying everything, he argued, will not be enough: some industrial processes and the need for seasonal energy storage require gases, and hydrogen specifically, in ways electricity alone cannot provide.
The numbers he shared were sobering. Some 106 hydrogen valleys are now in development across 35 countries, but only around 4% have reached a Final Investment Decision, the point where a project moves from plan to infrastructure. In his view, too many are built as standalone projects rather than as part of a connected value chain. Hydrogen valleys and regional clusters work best as the nucleus of a wider economic system, where production, transport, industrial use and mobility are planned together from the outset rather than added on later.
Case studies from across Europe
Tatiana Bloch of the New Energy Coalition presented HEAVENN, the first EU hydrogen valley funded by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. Running since 2020 across the Dutch provinces of Groningen and Drenthe, it spans four clusters: industrial hubs at Eemshaven and Emmen, an underground storage and heating demonstrator, and a mobility cluster, on a total budget of roughly €90 million, of which €20 million comes from the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. The project runs to 2027 and involves partners from seven countries, including 11 SMEs, with ERIG as a replication partner. It is one of 25 EU-funded hydrogen valleys; the New Energy Coalition is also involved in GreenHysland on Majorca and a newer valley taking shape in Bremen, Germany.
Tatiana Karasova of the Slovak Innovation and Energy Agency presented ELEVATE CE, which connects hydrogen developments across Slovakia, Hungary and Austria with replication goals similar to HEAVENN’s.
Steinmüller also presented Austria’s own large-scale hydrogen valley: 12 planned production sites ranging from 1.5 to 18 megawatts, combined with underground storage and a first pipeline planned to the city of Linz. The target is roughly 10,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year and savings of more than 200,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent by 2030. Three Final Investment Decisions have already been secured, with the rest expected by the end of the year and implementation beginning in 2027.
Hy2Market’s role: connecting the learning, not just the molecules
Dirk Koppert, Hy2Market’s coordinator, presented a project with a different structure to the others. Funded through the EU’s Interregional Innovation Investment (I3) instrument rather than the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, Hy2Market spans eight countries — France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Greece, Romania and the Netherlands — and is organised around the same four stages as the wider sector: production, transport, industrial use and mobility.
Rather than moving hydrogen between regions, Koppert described Hy2Market as a “virtual value chain” built on shared learning and replication. An innovation developed in Spain can be applied to a region in Greece; knowledge from HEAVENN in the Netherlands can inform Austria’s valley; piping innovations from the Northern Netherlands are being studied for replication in Asturias and Castilla y León. “Replication is key,” Koppert said — the goal is to speed up the learning curve across regions rather than have each one solve the same problems independently.
Hy2Market runs both internal knowledge-exchange sessions, covering topics such as training, standardisation and regulation, and external sessions open to a wider audience, including a recent session on AI and digitalisation in the hydrogen market with an Austrian speaker. That connective role, linking regions and disciplines that would otherwise develop separately, is what Hy2Market brings to the hydrogen valley landscape.