The European Commission last week launched the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative (JTI), a public private partnership with joint funding from the European Community (EU) and from industry with industry in the lead. The Commission will fund €470m (US$615m) from the FP7 program over six years and at least the same amount will come from private industry.
The promise is that the JTI will to deliver robust hydrogen supply and fuel cell technologies developed to the point of commercial take-off. For the automotive sector, the aim is to achieve breakthroughs in bottleneck technologies and to enable industry to take the large-scale commercialization decisions necessary to achieve mass market growth in the time-frame 2015-2020. For stationary fuel cells (domestic and commercial) and portable applications, the JTI will provide the technology base to initiate market growth from 2010-2015.
According to a statement released by the initiative, “hydrogen should be seen as a complementary energy vector to electricity and biofuels. It is already part of today’s industrial technology; yet for energy use the real benefits can only be exploited with novel technologies such as fuel cells. As hydrogen can be produced from a great variety of primary energies and it can be advantageously utilized in a great variety of different applications (transport, portable and stationary power) it will form an energy hub like electric power.
“Hydrogen has the advantage over electricity that it can be stored much better, which could be used to match renewable power supply and power demand. Hydrogen can be carbon-dioxide-free or lean on its energy pathway if produced appropriately and it can be used as a transportation fuel without emitting carbon dioxide.”
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