About the Project

The map shown here is a project of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The aim of the map is to provide an overview of the numerous projects, initiatives and institutions around the topic of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is indispensable for achieving the climate protection goals by 2045. As a storage medium for electricity from renewable energies, as a fuel in mobility or in industry, it is used wherever the direct use of renewable energies is not possible. In the future, large quantities of hydrogen will be needed in industry in particular, both as an energy carrier for high-temperature processes and as a raw material, e.g. for the steel and chemical industries. But other sectors, such as the heating sector, are also increasingly relying on hydrogen-based applications.

In November 2020, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia published its Hydrogen Roadmap: a roadmap for the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy. Since then, numerous projects and initiatives have set out to promote the use and development of various hydrogen technologies.

The map shown here provides an overview and initial information on the numerous hydrogen projects in North Rhine-Westphalia. For this purpose, the funding database of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Enargus and the European funding database Cordis were evaluated, among others. The map also contains research and innovation projects funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in cooperation with the project management organisation Jülich. The majority of the innovation projects are collaborative projects, i.e. projects in which several companies and/or research institutions are involved. This means that in some cases a project or a joint project can be seen in several places on the map.

The hydrogen map was designed together with the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection (LANUV). The LANUV has been the central point of contact for data on the energy transition in North Rhine-Westphalia for many years and provides the public with extensive information on this in the digital specialist information system Energy Atlas NRW.