The German Federal Ministry of Transport announced yesterday the results on the funding call for a consortium funding scheme for hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS) and hydrogen vehicles. 

• 526 applications were submitted, requesting a funding volume of €455 million
• 71 applications were submitted for HRS
• 455 applications were submitted for vehicles and vehicle fleets

The Ministry will ultimately provide €220 million for the call and announce in the second half of the year which applications are selected.

Consortium funding schemes help address the problem of operators not investing in HRS because of insufficient hydrogen-powered trucks and transport companies being hesitant to invest in the trucks without the sufficient infrastructure to refuel them, also known as the chicken-egg problem. Consortium funding schemes thus ensure synchronisation with both the infrastructure and the offtake being in place to drive hydrogen mobility forward.

A similar consortium funding scheme, known as the SwiM programme, has been successful in the Netherlands with a 3^rd application round in April, which was thoroughly discussed during Hydrogen Europe’s H2Talk in March. 

For more information:

• Hydrogen Europe position paper: Scaling up hydrogen in road transport
• Hydrogen Europe position paper: Funding for hydrogen mobility
• The H2Talk recording on AFIF, AFIR & the future of hydrogen mobility is available here.