HyExperts I: EgoH2 Ecosystem

Project description

The city of Essen is located in the heart of the Ruhr region and has a high population density with about 590 000 inhabitants living on 210 square kilometres..  The city is one of the ten largest cities in Germany. Over the last 150 years, Essen has undergone a significant transformation process, evolving from relatively rural structures to a city of the coal mining and steel industries, and then on to become the European Green Capital 2017. Today, services, energy and health are the city’s most important economic sectors. Due to Essen’s high density as well as its highly interconnected location in the Ruhr region, the challenge of sustainable mobility development is increasing, both in public transport and in private goods and passenger transport. These challenges are addressed in the HyExperts programme by developing a feasibility study for an H2 ecosystem for emission-free and sustainable mobility in urban areas. Emission-free is ensured by the use of exclusively green hydrogen and sustainability is pursued by defining cross-sectoral influencing factors that form the basis of the future target scenarios. Transformation paths will be developed that take up existing infrastructures and identify challenges on the path towards the target vision of an H2 ecosystem. The concept is made more concrete using the example of public transport in Essen. Its implementation leads to a considerable reduction of CO2as well as particulate and nitrogen oxide emissions in the region.  During the development of the study, local stakeholders from the fields of mobility, industry and energy are actively involved in order to integrate concrete problems and requirements for an H2 ecosystem.  The methodical design of the study enables the transferability of the results to other cities in the Ruhr area as well as to other regions.

 The aim of the project is to reduce CO2as well as particulate and nitrogen oxide  emissions by preparing a feasibility study for an H2 ecosystem for zero-emission and sustainable mobility in metropolitan areas using the city of Essen as an example, which can be used as a blueprint for other cities and regions.