On 14 and 15 December the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) presented the results from the last 10 years of the National Innovation Programme for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology (NIP). Numerous project partners, interested parties and politicians took the advantage of the two-days conference to take stock of the past funding period of the innovation programme and to take an outlook on the future.
The National Organisation Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology NOW GmbH has supervised more than 650 individual projects as well as industrial networking initiatives since its founding year 2008. The hydrogen and fuel cell technology has been developed significantly since then. Lighthouse projects presented at the conference such as Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) or Clean Power Net examined these developments and took stock of the project during the past funding period 2006 to 2016. Thanks to a stable framework initiated by the NIP, an own sector could in the meantime be established in Germany with more than 500 companies and research institutes.
At the end of the conference, Brigitta Worringen, head of the subdivision “sustainable mobility, energy, logistics” at the BMVI announced that the federal programme NIP will continue until 2026 thanks to the success in the past years. Thus the necessary continuity in this technology sector will be assured and established know-how for further development can be used. Appropriate resources are available (250 million Euros until 2019; 1,1 billion Euros are expected until 2026); primal application procedures are already running.