Concrete plans and collaboration – takeaways from EU Industry Days 2023
H2 Cluster Finland, BalticSeaH2, Estonian Hydrogen Cluster and Spanish Hydrogen Association hosted a joint session called “Hydrogen economy as a driver for industrial excellence and decarbonisation in the Baltic Sea Region and the Iberian Peninsula” at EU Industry Days in Málaga.
Hydrogen Cluster Finland introduced the Finnish approach to building hydrogen economy, including the hydrogen economy strategy published in June.
Key takeaway from the session and discussions at Industry Days highlighted that Finland is already a forerunner in how advanced the hydrogen economy plans are already. In Finland, the creation of a hydrogen economy and hydrogen value chains is not happening only on paper, we are actively building it already.
“Finland raised a lot of interest, especially in how concrete our plan is. The hydrogen economy strategy we produced this year offers clear steps and a unified vision for building a working hydrogen economy”, says Simo Säynevirta, chair of Hydrogen Cluster Finland.
An important practical action raised in the strategy was building hydrogen valleys, regions with several hydrogen applications to create a local ecosystem for hydrogen and demonstrate hydrogen economy. Finland already has hydrogen valleys, including BalticSeaH2, which spans to Estonia and includes seven connected valleys across Baltic Sea region. This type of collaboration between both organisations and countries is significant and important – many other participants at EU Industry Days raised competition instead of collaboration as a significant issue that can hinder building a hydrogen economy.
Spain also has several EU-funded hydrogen valleys, as introduced by Spanish Hydrogen Association during the Industry Days session. Spanish hydrogen valleys cover the whole hydrogen value chain relatively well, but we also recognised that regarding technologies, it would make sense to collaborate between Spain and Finland.
