IPCEI stands for 'Important Project of Common European Interest'. An IPCEI is a European project in a key strategic value chain that consists of several company projects from various EU Member States. An IPCEI contributes to strategic European goals such as growth, employment and competitiveness of the European Union industry and economy and which is funded by state aid.

IPCEIs make it possible to bring together knowledge, expertise, financial resources and economic actors throughout the Union, so as to overcome important market or systemic failures and societal challenges which could not otherwise be addressed.  The four IPCEIs on Hydrogen contribute to a powerful value chain for renewable hydrogen at low costs, as well as to the objectives of key EU policy. 

IPCEI Hy2Tech (Hydrogen Technologies) pursues numerous objectives which consider different aspects of the hydrogen value chain such as the scaling up of production capacity for electrolysers, fuel cells, key enabling technologies and critical components, as well as the improvement of hydrogen storing capacity in underground porous structures, to arrive to the establishment of a large-scale First Industrial Deployment of innovative hydrogen technologies in order to capitalize on the RDI efforts made in these fields and unlock vast decarbonisation potential. 

At the time the project was approved by the European Commission, it involved 41 initiatives from 35 companies. These projects were submitted by 15 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain.

The project of FBK

Fondazione Bruno Kessler - through its Center for Sustainable Energy - is involved in the Hy2Tech project as Associated Partner. 

With the ORION project, the Center for Sustainable Energy at FBK proposes the setting-up of a multi-scale development, testing and validation infrastructure for R&D&I activities for hydrogen technologies, that will provide support with research, development and innovation activities to European companies, promoting the development of components/systems for the H2 sector, carrying out tests in real conditions aimed at reducing direct and indirect costs, enabling and accelerating the large-scale deployment of hydrogen technologies and activate the strategic European supply chain.

Through infrastructure and expertise, R&D&I activities will be carried out on electrolysis and fuel cell technologies and on hydrogen transport, storage and management technologies, on the development of individual components, with prototyping and validation actions, the development of new hydrogen carriers and their management and conversion, the analysis and validation of solutions for hydrogen injection into natural gas networks,  as well as technologies for the end use of hydrogen in mobility, industry or residential applications.

An integral part of the research facility's offering is the possibility of carrying out long-term tests (even exceeding 10,000 hours) or accelerated tests, which are extremely useful and costly in a business context and for defining business cases for H2 systems. Alongside the development of the above components, a laboratory will be set up for the modelling and development of technologies using virtual tools, including advanced controls. In addition, the research and development context will be supported by collaboration with various certification bodies in order to provide companies with pre-certification services for the components developed.

The FBK ORION project involves four cross-cutting activities focused on all the Hy2Tech ‘Technology Fields’ through the 

• Development of hydrogen generation technologies

• Development of Fuel Cells

• Development of technologies for the storage, transportation and distribution

• Development of technologies of end users.

More information:

Project Acronym     | ORION

Starting date | June 1st 2023

Ending date         | May 31st 2028

Duration | 60 months

Project CUP | B63C23000690009

Project ID | IPCEI-I1_0000006

IPCEI grant         | 19.995.804,00 EU

Hy2Tech website: 

https://ipcei.observatory.clean-hydrogen.europa.eu/hy2tech 

https://www.fbk.eu/it/ipcei/ in https://www.fbk.eu/en/fbk-national-recovery-resilience-plan/ 

Press releases and articles related to FBK participation in Hy2Tech: 

• Energia: partnership ENEA-FBK su idrogeno, batterie e rinnovabili: https://magazine.fbk.eu/it/news/energia-partnership-enea-fondazione-bruno-kessler-su-idrogeno-batterie-e-rinnovabili/

• "FBK at the Joint General Assembly of the four waves of the IPCEI Hydrogen": https://energy.fbk.eu/news/archive-news-2024 

• "FBK at SOFC XIX" https://energy.fbk.eu/news