With the support of the Green Hydrogen Sector Fund, the H24U Project, made up of a consortium of the companies Saceem and CIR, will seek to lay the foundations for the advancement of one of the pillars of the second energy transition in Uruguay.
The H24U project was selected by the Green Hydrogen Sector Fund to receive financial support for the implementation of the first commercial cargo transportation venture that will use green hydrogen as energy.
The call, launched in 2022, was aimed at financing and supporting the construction, production and use of green hydrogen and its derivatives. The fund is carried out by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM), the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay (LATU) and the National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII), with the task of financing research, innovation and training projects in green hydrogen.
The open call for projects was carried out in two stages: first, a call for profiles, and then move forward with the complete presentation of commercial projects. The recommendation of the selected project was made by a technical committee made up of representatives of the Uruguayan academic sector (teacher and researcher at UdelaR and member of RedH2Uy), MIEM technicians and specialists in the subject from the Netherlands and Germany. The H24U project, presented by the consortium made up of Saceem and CIR, was a beneficiary of this call and will have access to 10 million non-reimbursable dollars, to be granted over a period of 10 years, to develop a project that will incorporate development and production technology of green hydrogen in different dimensions and productive areas. The project foresees an investment of 43,
The first area of ​​approach will be the transport of heavy cargo, responsible for approximately 28% of the country’s energy demand (according to the 2021 National Energy Balance) and which is currently supplied almost entirely by petroleum derivatives. The project foresees the development, engineering and production of green hydrogen that will be used in trucks that will be specially adapted, and will be destined for forestry transport.
On the other hand, in later stages, together with the Conecta company, the project could inject green hydrogen into the existing Gas Natural de Paysandú network. This initiative would be a first pilot that will allow evaluating its subsequent incorporation on a larger scale in the progressive decarbonization of natural gas networks.
These two initiatives are thought of in an integral way, developing trucks specifically for the needs of the Uruguayan forestry market and centralizing the production of green hydrogen in a single point to feed this same fleet of trucks.
The initiative will promote the development of regulations and knowledge, which will then allow the technology to be scaled up to other activities at the national level, generating experience and inputs for the development of public policies focused on sustainable development.
H24U is a project with strong technology transfer from leading companies worldwide, which will also train Uruguayan professionals to lay the foundations for future developments for the growth of the green hydrogen industry in our country.
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