BalticSeaH2

Challenge

To address the urgency of the global climate crisis, there is a strong need to replace fossil fuels with green fuels. Not only will the technologies need to be matured enough to produce large quantities of green fuels, but it is also key to ensure that the infrastructure is in place for the green fuels in order to distribute them more efficiently and lower the cost.

Following the war in Ukraine and the consequent energy crisis in Europe, there is a need to speed up the clean energy transition even more and establish sufficient energy infrastructure in Europe. Green hydrogen holds great potential in this regard, but requires cross-border collaboration and -infrastructure to be utilized on a large scale.

Solution

The project will address the challenges of energy security and the green transition by establishing a hydrogen valley in the Baltic Sea. The main Valley will be located in the Gulf of Finland. Besides the Main Valley, the project will establish Connected Valleys in the countries around the Baltic Sea as a means to validate solutions from the Main Valley and pave the way for new Valleys in other parts of Europe. Not only will this setup address energy security and green transition – it will also accelerate the economic growth in the Baltic Sea Region and Europe with a potential capacity of >450 TWh.

Main deliveries

• A cross-border interregional large scale hydrogen valley will be established in the Baltic Sea Region involving the neighboring countries in one ‘main’ and several ‘connected’ hydrogen valleys.
• The project will introduce and demonstrate a sector-coupled dynamic market system for clean hydrogen by introducing a replicable operating model for a cross-sectoral energy system of heat, hydrogen and electricity.
• The project will set up an online first of its kind “H2Pool” marketplace concept supporting the vision of a sector-coupled interregional market model.
• Learnings and results from the project will be collected in a replication model that can support the development of other interregional hydrogen markets and thereby the development of a European hydrogen economy.

Expected result

At the end of the project, a cross-border hydrogen valley will have been set up between Finland and Estonia. This ‘main valley’ will be connected to local hydrogen valleys in the Baltic Sea Region. The project will have developed, scaled and demonstrated hydrogen use in production, storage and distribution and in Use Cases in different sectors from industry, mobility and energy. Finally, the project will ensure that the results are replicable in other regions.