Nordic Energy Research

On 4–5 October, the Nordic Hydrogen Valleys Conference will take place in Reykjavík, Iceland. Save the date and remember to sign up!

By building on the five projects supported through the call “Nordic hydrogen valleys as energy hubs – by 2030 and 2040” within the programme Nordic Hydrogen Valleys as Energy Hubs, the conference will connect researchers and stakeholders in the Nordics and beyond.

One of the projects that will be addressed at the conference is Hydrogen Safety and Improved Permit Processes (H2SIPP). Cecilia Wallmark is Project Lead of H2SIPP and Director of the hydrogen initiative CH2ESS at Luleå University of Technology. She thinks the conference will be very good for meeting the stakeholders from the other projects, as well as other participants, to strengthen the exchange between the Nordic stakeholders during the coming three years of project work in parallel. “Together with our partners, we have high expectations of being able to support the implementation of hydrogen to benefit both the climate and increased security in the energy system in the Nordics, with further global dissemination of our results at the conference,” says Cecilia.

Hydrogen is a key to succeed with the energy transition

Cecilia points out that hydrogen is expressed as a key to succeed with the energy and industry transition needed to reach the global climate targets.

“‘Hydrogen as a key’ was the phrasing by the EU presented in the hydrogen strategy from 2020. To succeed with the transition, we need to overcome all barriers connected with the introduction of new technology on the market. Today, the main mentioned barrier by active stakeholders are the missing standards and regulations to support quick permit processes, not least in connection to safety questions. The insight is also strong that strong co-operations along the hydrogen value chain and across the geography are needed to accelerate the implementation,” says Cecilia. The H2SIPP project is capable of supporting this progress, not least by communicating their results at the Nordic Hydrogen Valleys Conference.

Conference of manifold importance

According to Cecilia, the Nordic Hydrogen Valleys Conference is important for several different reasons.

“One of the reasons is that many of us already are involved in strong hydrogen valleys, such as the one in the North of Sweden, without having labelled it a Hydrogen Valley so far. This means that we have so much both information to share and identified barriers to bring up for analysis and actions together with the broad range of participants at events like this. Another reason is that we as a research centre already during the last years have set a focus on strengthening the co-operation on Nordic level – which for example, was well explained by the Nordic Energy Research CEO Klaus Skytte in September 2022 at the Clean Energy Ministerial side event where I participated and got thrilled by the insight that we together is one of the largest geographies within business globally. Nordic co-operation is one of the strong common possibilities to explore further, also confirmed by the 150 stakeholders participating at our conference ‘Building the Nordic Hydrogen Economy‘ that we held together with stakeholders such as the Finnish BotH2nia network in Luleå in January this year,” says Cecilia.

A third reason Cecilia mentions is to actually bring the development of common Nordic offers, both products and services, further on – such as examples and arguments given in the analyses performed by Business Sweden, Business Finland, and others, regarding co-operation possibilities and good matches within hydrogen across the Nordic countries.

Sign up for the conference here

For more information, please contact Senior Adviser Lise Nielson or Adviser Ole Aune Ødegård.