European Parliament Gives Go-ahead to €1B Fuel Cells and Hydrogen JTI; Mass-Market Transport Applications Targeted for 2020
25 May 2008
The European Parliament has supported establishing the EU’s Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) Initiative—the fifth Joint Technology Initiative (JTI)—by a vote of 590 to 619. Between 2008 and 2017, the FCH JTI will have a budget of €1 billion (US$1.58 billion).
The initial proposal for the FCH JTI from the European Commission called for establishing the program for an initial ten years period that could be extended. The European Parliament amended that to establish the program for only a 10-year period, but noted that it should be ensured that after the last call for proposals in 2013, projects still in progress are implemented, monitored and funded until 2017.
The FCH JTI aims to facilitate and accelerate the development and deployment of cost-competitive European hydrogen and fuel cell based energy systems and component technologies for applications in transport, stationary and portable power.
The new JTI will build on the work of the industry-led European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform (HFP), with a special focus on its implementation plan. This plan foresees a series of actions relating to the development of hydrogen supply and fuel technologies including:
Commercial take-off for early market applications (e.g. handheld devices, portable generators) by 2010;
Stationary applications (domestic and commercial combined heat and power) by 2015;
Mass market roll-out of transport applications by 2020.
The €1 billion investment will be shared by its two founding members, the European Commission and the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative Industry Grouping, a non-profit organization uniting the sector’s key players.
HFP is planning a Fuel Cell and Hydrogen General Stakeholders Assembly for 13-15 October 2008 in Brussels, Belgium, to launch the FCH JTI.
JTIs create public-private partnerships in industrial research at European level for the first time. The other four JTIs that have been set up so far include ARTEMIS (Embedded Computing Systems), ENIAC (Nanoelectronics Technologies 2020), Clean Sky (Aeronautics and Air Transport) and IMI (Innovative Medicines).
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it would be a better investment to funnel 1 billion euros into CCS and zero-carbon syngas production.
Posted by: marc | 25 May 2008 at 09:04 AM
This should be named Maginot Line Part Deux!
Posted by: DS | 25 May 2008 at 10:10 AM
Or batteries & EVs.
You can argue that it is a waste of money, but if you compare the scale with the CAP or the US defense spending, you can see it is small change.
+ they might come up with something.
Or a bit of something.
Note from the vote that it was close - not everyone is convinced by it.
As long as it does not postpone the near term electrification of transport, it won't be a problem, except the cost.
It "Fuel cells" are a gambol that has not, and may never, pay off, but if it did, it would be an elegant solution.
Thus, it may be appropriate that large institutions, such as the EU fund the research to do it.
In the meantime, the rest of Europe will go diesel and battery EV.
Posted by: mahonj | 25 May 2008 at 12:36 PM
Fuel cells are already syatyong to pat off. As the cost fell and the lifespan soared the little buggers started being preped for alot of very important tasks.
The most revent gens have been seeing 10k hour warranties and prices far lower then before.
To give a comparison when they did the fcev bus study that cost 32x the cost of diesel to operate.. that fc only ran for 500 and was an order of magnatude more spendy... And the fuel they used was 10x the price of current h2.
Gas just hit 4.29 here deisel is near 5 and an h2 bus travels 2x as far on a gallon equive of h2 even with older fuelcells much less the massively improves ones we just started making...
And h2 is STILL getting cheaper.
Posted by: wintermane | 25 May 2008 at 08:47 PM
Shouldn't we be aiming to [i]conserve[/i] energy in this day and age, rather than squander it?
Posted by: clett | 26 May 2008 at 03:07 AM
Clett fuel cells are about ALOT more then cars. There are alot of applications where there simply was no good power source before and now finaly we have one.
Also alot of power units up till now operated at very low eff and broke down very often,, These newer cells are far far better and stay operational far longer AND arnt likely to break down ubexpectedly.
A power source that small and potebt and that wont just break at random.. one that can be counted on to last x years and be replaced on YOUR schedual by untrained people rather then the nightmare of repairing and repalcing generators that have a habit of breaking in the worst times...
And then later to replace alot of home systems with something better..
And THEN to replace engines in cars.. when they get cheap and last and are even more efficeint then now.
Posted by: wintermane | 26 May 2008 at 04:00 AM
There are fuel cells and there are fuel cells.
Solid-oxide fuel cells look like they'll make great automotive APU's.
Molten-carbonate fuel cells are well-suited to be a high-efficiency topping cycle for gas-turbine powerplants.
Direct-carbon fuel cells may give us 80% conversion efficiency from biochar to electricity.
Hydrogen fuel cells require the production of hydrogen, which is several steps removed from any primary energy source. Aside from niche applications, they are a dead end.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 26 May 2008 at 07:14 AM
Somebody needs a spell check...
Posted by: Alex | 26 May 2008 at 08:48 AM
Hi Engineer-poet
Do you think that drilling the surface o the earth you can get gasoline or Diesel?
Also Oil needs Hydrogen () to syntettize gasolineproduced very cheaply from methane at1 $/kg). And in the near future the amount of hydrogen to produce 1 gallon of gasoline will increase du to the poor quality of tha available oil!
We will arrive close to evaluate if it would be better to fill the car directly with H2 or waste in hydrocrack iof very heavy dirt oil.
Are you aware of that?
PS Please do not say that it is better to feed cars directly with ch4 , because the path ch4->h2_FCV is 2 times more efficient.
bye
Posted by: Paul | 26 May 2008 at 02:07 PM
Great, with bio-hydrogen we can go carbon-negative! We can then save the planet by driving our cars more often.
1. Grow sustainable biomass (it sequesters CO2)
2. Convert the biomass into hydrogen (a decarbonized fuel)
3. Geosequester the CO2 that gets released during this process
4. You can now drive a car with it, and while doing so, take historic CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere.
Great!! €1 billion is too little, though. Should have been 10 times that.
Posted by: Jonas | 26 May 2008 at 04:28 PM
Since "Paul" asked...
No. You get a liquid with fractions which can be used directly for those purposes, though. Other fractions can be refined with relatively low losses; conversion from crude oil to diesel is roughly 88% efficient.Yes, cracking of heavier fractions and desulfurization do require hydrogen. This does not make hydrogen the best fuel, nor does it magically create enough methane to supply all our needs with hydrogen (as much as the authors of the Thomas study wished it was so).
Wonderful! This is a good reason to stop making so much gasoline.
That does not follow. If you take large losses in the conversion of heavy crude to gasoline, it does not mean that you should take bigger losses to convert it to hydrogen.
I don't think you're the one to be asking questions about awareness; the irony is just too much.
Ah, you ARE just a shill for hydrogen fuel cells! Aside from the issue of building a brand-new infrastructure for making, transporting and fueling hydrogen, how do you intend to create PEM fuel cells with adequate lifespan and low cost? And where would the USA, which currently uses only 19 quadrillion BTU of natural gas per year, get enough to replace 28 quads of transportation fuels with hydrogen generated from methane?
I'm with Dr. Ulf Bossel of the European Fuel Cell Forum; I think hydrogen is a waste of effort. The solution is to leverage the infrastructure we already have, and electrify our transport. Biofuels like Choren's "green diesel" can fill in where electricity can't go.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 26 May 2008 at 08:47 PM
WP. The fact is alot of this is the sudden realisation that fuel cells are going t be a huge and vital ind and europe doesnt want to hose up and not have a domestruc fuel cell ind 20 years down the road.
The us learned from the nimg mess that they want to watch and support this sort of thing and while watching it they found out just how big a deal it was shaping up to be..
So this time they do everything they can to ansure we have li ion and fuel cell ind so we dont get caught flat footed... concidering the scope of change to come I think securing both industries is a very solid idea. Same with biofuels and wind and nuke and fusion.. we want he tech to be OURS. Its not even as if we are spending much to get it either.
Oh and ep fuel cells in cars are now garanteed.. cheaper then gas longer range then bev higher power hihjer energy and the fuel cells are cheap enough and last long enough and the tanks holf enough.
As with bev and erev its now just a qurdtion of how many how fast.
Posted by: wintermane | 27 May 2008 at 04:48 AM
If you can't be bothered to spell-check, why should we bother to read?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 27 May 2008 at 05:09 AM
Please note: 590 out of 619 votes. Not 590 to 619. The European parliament has 785 seats.
Posted by: nanne | 27 May 2008 at 07:52 AM
Ep im blind and the facy is I cant tell if my posts have errors in them I try but frankly at this point it doesnt help anymore I often make more errors checking the spelling them I do in the first place.. case in point that last post I reread and tweaked 2 times before posating... onky makes it worse now..
With luck ill be seeing again in a month but my healthcare is slow on oking the cateract surgery.
As for the topic at hand... fuel cells show more then enough market value to warrent producer nations to ensure they are still in the running WHEN it goes big time.
Posted by: wintermane | 27 May 2008 at 09:36 AM
EP,
You've been here longer than me. Enough to know Wintermane's disability. I often value your input. Insult Wintermane's reasoning or thoughts, but don't play coy when others may not know of his disability. Or are you pleading ignorance in this instance?
I rarely have time to spell check myself as is evident by many of my post.
Personally I can see both sides. We are in a historic massive phase energy transformation. A paradigm shift. Where world governments, politics, corporations, investors, inventors all attempting multiple long term solutions, unwilling to look past any one specific category.
Only time will tell what comes out of all these efforts as solutions are streamlined in the future thru competitive alternatives. As different solutions win, we will all get a more accurate picture in hindsight.
However, I agree with EP that hydrogen is a poor solution for transport from what we currently know. What is interesting is how GM thru the Volt design has placed itself for any outcome in the future.
Posted by: Michael | 28 May 2008 at 09:48 PM
Both gm and gona are hedging bets in case battery or fuel cell fail or go slow.
H2 cells are dioing rather well lately.. Thats likely why they are popping up in the news alot now.. jumps from 2k to 4k then to 10k operating hours will do that specialy if combined with costs dropping 70 to 90%...
We will see how it shapes up when the mass produced systems start popping into the market and get certified for various uses. Right now its nearly impossible to follow as its hard to tell wich sizes if fuell cells and wich types of li ion batteries are improving..
Id be alot more worried if I had money but as I dont I cant buy any of these wonder gizmos anyway... just hope im not going to superwallyworld on a scateboard when this is all done.. thats my one true hope.
Posted by: wintermane | 29 May 2008 at 03:30 PM
If he would spend the time to fix the former, it could not but have a salutary effect upon the latter.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 30 May 2008 at 07:54 PM