On 4 September 2023, the Leine-Weser Forum & Regional Network Conference organized by the Leine-Weser Regional Development Office took place in the Danish Pavilion in Hanover. The event followed the motto “Shaping the future in urban and rural areas” and served as a platform for networking and exchange between stakeholders from administration, science and business on the topics of public services, climate protection, digitalization and mobility. The focus was on the diverse challenges facing municipalities, districts and cities in the face of digitalization, decarbonization and demographic change.
The Leine-Weser Forum offered a diverse supporting program consisting of workshops, lectures and its own trade fair format, the “Market of Opportunities”. The latter gave participants the opportunity to learn about various best-practice examples of successful regional development projects and exchange experiences.
The event was opened by the Minister for Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development, Wiebke Osigus. She emphasized the importance of the event and highlighted the success of projects carried out in the Leine-Weser region. Further keynote speeches were given by Frauke Patzke, State Commissioner for Regional Development Leine-Weser, on the topic of “Funding and support opportunities from the Leine-Weser Regional Development Office” and Andreas Bade, Director of the Institute for Universal Design, on the topic of “Learning to walk in the shoes of citizens”.
Various workshops were scheduled for the rest of the day, which once again offered the opportunity for in-depth discussions. Among other things, the focus was on the climate protection potential of using hydrogen as an energy source and the contribution of the “Digital Villages” programme to the digitalization of rural areas. The workshops were practice-oriented. At the same time, various stakeholders were given the opportunity to present their own work. For example, the “DorfFunk” project from Fraunhofer IESE was presented. As part of the “Digital Villages” funding program, a platform was developed that enables municipalities to set up a social network at community level and thus give residents the opportunity to exchange information or place classified ads.
By participating in the network conference and the workshop on hydrogen as an energy carrier, aconium GmbH was able to pick up on interesting approaches to complement its Interreg project “LIHYP – Linking Hydrogen Power Potential”, which was launched in June 2023. The aim of this project is to initiate opportunities to accelerate the market launch of hydrogen applications that lead to regional hydrogen value chains in the North Sea region. As part of LIHYP, aconium GmbH, together with the other project partners in the consortium, aims to bring together hydrogen demand and supply as well as their stakeholders in the region.