The Hydrogen Utilization and Green Energy project, called HUGE for short, was formally launched in Galway, Ireland in early July.
HUGE is a €1.4 million, 3 year project funded by the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme, under Priority Axis 3. The HUGE project aims to provide communities with energy security by delivering to them the necessary tools to assess the hydrogen renewable energy chain opportunities in the Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) area and beyond.
Icelandic New Energy will take part in work packages concerning the creation of hydrogen utilization business models and the transfer of hydrogen knowledge and technology to stakeholders.
The Project
The HUGE project aims to provide communities with energy security by delivering to them the necessary tools to assess the hydrogen renewable energy chain opportunities in the Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) area and beyond.
Whilst many communities in the NPA are challenged by low economic diversity, result of their peripheral locations, dispersed demography and lack of critical mass, they have abundant amounts of renewable energy resources available locally.
On many occasions, where renewables are implemented, the generated electricity/heat is more than that required by the local population.
At the same time the electric grid infrastructure in many NPA areas is underdeveloped, resulting in the curtailment of green electricity production, and inefficient resource use as clean energy is left unharnessed.
Similar situations are encountered by communities living off-grid where the mechanisms do not exist to harness the excess energy generated nor store it efficiently.
HUGE aims to overcome these barriers by building capacity in communities, with the help of sectoral agencies and SME’s to exploit the abundance of natural resources to their full potential through raising awareness about the benefits that can be delivered by employing a hydrogen economy.
HUGE will achieve this by assessing the hydrogen renewable energy chain from production through storage to transportation and on to the end-user.We’ll accomplish it by identifying and assessing viable technical processes for hydrogen operations, creating a business model for hydrogen utilization and enabling effective knowledge transfer through an online, multilingual platform.
The result is the Hydrogen Operational Technical (HOT) service, created by direct interaction with the relevant end-users and stakeholders, and ready for them to implement. Hydrogen is a flexible energy carrier, can be produced from any prevalent source and effectively transformed for diverse end-use applications.
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