If it is up to the speakers who will take to the podium one after the other at the Nuremberg Exhibition Center on Wednesday, then the end of all energy worries is far on the horizon – and only thanks to a gas that is at the top of the periodic table. It is high time for “a strong hydrogen economy”, says trade fair boss Roland Fleck. “Hydrogen will be one of the pillars,” says Nuremberg’s economics officer Michael Fraas about the future of his city and the region. And Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (FW) even considers the element to be “a jack of all trades” and claims to have observed: “Suddenly everyone believes in hydrogen.”
For many people outside the exhibition center, on the other hand, this belief has so far been more of a theoretical nature. While representatives from politics, business and science are still discussing at the “Hydrogen Dialogue” in Nuremberg until this Thursday how the hydrogen economy can be made to run better internationally, there are also no visible results in Bavaria.
There are now several projects on the subject: Last week, for example, the largest Bavarian electrolysis plant to date went into operation in Wunsiedel. It is initially intended to produce up to 1,350 tons of hydrogen annually for the region from wind and solar power. However, there is a lot of work to be done in the future before the element can live up to its hopes as an energy source in industry and transport across the board.
Time is of the essence. With the Russian attack on Ukraine and rising energy prices, alternatives to gas and oil are more in demand than ever. The question marks that the trade fair and its participants are dealing with are correspondingly large. For example, what hydrogen could mean geopolitically for the energy supply in Europe – and how to get the element to where it is needed.
At the trade fair, a representative of the Colombian government confirmed that her country could well imagine hydrogen exports to Europe from 2030 onwards. The only open question is how the element would then get from the ports to Bavaria, for example. And the electrolysers that Aiwanger wants to set up in every district are unlikely to meet the demand on their own. The state government is therefore worried about falling behind on the supply of hydrogen before it has even really started. It was only on Monday that she once again called on the federal government to speed up planning for the hydrogen pipelines that have so far been missing. “We do not accept that Bavaria should not be connected to the national and European hydrogen network until 2032,” says a statement.
After all, the current energy shortage offers the chance to give the vague future contours faster than before. This is how some see it at the hydrogen trade fair. “The crisis is not only slowing down,” says Veronika Grimm, a professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and board member of the Bavarian Hydrogen Alliance. In order to make progress, however, efforts must now be stepped up internationally and locally – even if that is not always easy.