Berlin, 09.09.2019 – The winning regions of the HyStarter competition have been named. Nine German regions will be supported in developing a local network of actors as well as a hydrogen concept for their region.
The nine ‘HyStarters’ of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure’s funding measure “HyLand – Hydrogen regions in Germany” are:
- Kiel
- Rügen-Stralsund
- County of Schaumburg
- Lusatia
- Weimar
- County of Marburg
- Neustadt an der Waldnaab
- Reutlingen
- Allgäu
A consortium comprising the companies Spilett, Choice, Becker-Büttner-Held Consulting, EE Engineers and Reiner Lemoine Institute have been tasked with implementing the HyStarter project. The project is funded from the budget of the National Innovation Programme for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell technology (NIP). NOW, which is federally-owned, coordinates the programme and is responsible for the HyStarter project.
The competition sparked huge interest nationwide: in total, 138 expressions of interest were received and 85 candidates submitted a complete application. The challenges for the regions in developing hydrogen concepts are varied, and were bundled into seven categories for the selection of the winners:
- Coastal land/Wind energy (Rügen-Stralsund)
- Structural change/Energy (Lusatia)
- Industry/Automobile (Reutlingen)
- Metropolitan region/Mobility (Kiel)
- Education/Knowledge transfer (Weimar and Marburg)
- Medium-sized regions (County of Allgäu and Schaumburg)
- Border region/European interconnection (Neustadt an der Waldnaab)
Two further competitions are underway in the HyExperts and HyPerformer categories from the funding measure “HyLand – Hydrogen regions in Germany”. With HyExperts and HyPerformer, the competition is oriented towards regions which have already gathered initial experiences or wish to implement concepts that already exist. The competition is open until 30 September 2019.