Innovative hydrogen projects in Europe are struggling to find basic technical components in the region, say panellists at a recent European Hydrogen Week event.

The supply chain in Europe must be strengthened if the region is to ensure that it can grow its hydrogen economy without hindrance, according to David Colomar of the European Institute for Energy Research (Eifer), who worked on the Cosmhyc hydrogen compression project.

“There is an urgent need to strengthen the European supply chain for components, including the vary basic ones,” he says. “It’s getting more and more critical to make sure we can do everything by ourselves otherwise one day we might not be able to build these machines because we cannot get the components we need.”

The Cosmhyc project developed and tested a new form of compression that would lower the costs and noise level of hydrogen refueling stations.

“There is an urgent need to strengthen the European supply chain for components” Colomar, Eifer

The project’s collaborators found that it was a challenge to find basic components from within the EU and often had to rely on non-European parts. And often even those parts purchased within the EU ultimately originated elsewhere.

“Each time we buy a component we ask our suppliers where it comes from,” says Colomar. “Often components are made in north America or Asia ultimately.”

Covid-19 and trade wars between the US and China have disrupted the resilience of global supply chains, leading many regions and countries to aim to be more self-sufficient.

Looking overseas

The Tahya project—which aims to develop cheaper hydrogen storage systems for vehicles—also struggled to find some components from within the EU, according to Axel Seifert, business development director at automotive equipment firm Plastic Omnium.

“Carbon fibre is not produced in Europe so we were dependent on production In South Korea, Japan and the US,” he said.

Carbon fibre is the main component of Tahya's storage system and therefore its availability and cost are vital factors in the cost of overall development.

To produce 100,000 fuel cell electric vehicles with carbon-fibre storage systems every year in the EU would require around 5,000 t/yr of carbon fibre—over 6pc of global annual production.

Both projects received funding from the EU’s Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), which aims to promote hydrogen technologies in the region. A report commissioned by the organisation—entitled ‘Value Added of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Sector in Europe’—found that the EU must participate in all parts of the hydrogen value chain if technology development is to be of the most economic value.

The report assesses various scenarios with differing levels of investment in different parts of the value chain. “The strong export performance in a high scenario comes from stronger European participation in the full value chain, from (sub)components all the way through to subsystems and system integration,” it concludes.

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Author: Tom Young