Implementing an energy transition that benefits the region at an acceptable cost, and making it a planning tool, is the objective stated by the Hauts-de-France Region. To define the hydrogen roadmap, Frédéric Nihous, Hauts-de-France regional advisor responsible for energy transition, turned to stakeholders in the sector. Interview.
The Hauts-de-France territory, through its industrial skills, its position as a transport hub and its history, from coal to nuclear, has always had numerous activities in the energy sector. The energy transition is therefore a key issue for us, explains Frédéric Nihous. Hydrogen as an energy vector has a strategic place. This is why the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, entrusted me with the mission of implementing a hydrogen plan. Our idea is to present a development plan which does not come from above, but on the contrary which is built by actors in the region. In the same way that we had previously launched a biogas collective and a solar collective, we therefore brought together companies, but also public authorities around a table by creating a hydrogen collective, led by Polenergy. The Region has the role of facilitator, booster, connector and facilitator, but it is businesses and local authorities that can implement concrete achievements. At the end of these meetings, we established a roadmap which was voted on at the end of 2019.”
The projects
“With hydrogen, we are affecting sectors such as river, rail and road transport, with its network of stations, but also industry and construction…: large-scale projects which require large-scale financing. However, the European hydrogen strategy plan and the French recovery plan have made significant budgets available.
You still need to know how to benefit from it! On this subject, the Region has the financing engineering skills to guide businesses and communities through the administrative maquis of grant requests! The roadmap first made it possible to have consistency in the deployment of these projects. The real question is: “How should we encourage deployment and on what scale to create real territorial ecosystems?” The answers are provided by the players in the sector, because there are several different projects. »
“On the mobility side, transport unions, network managers, transporters and transport users worked on different poles. In the Douai sector, logistics is in the spotlight, with thoughts on buses, garbage bins in Douaisis, utility vehicles for intermunicipal fleets, but which could also interest logistics companies like Amazon with the trolley hydrogen elevator. It is both a reflection on regional planning, the region being a road junction, with the positioning of hydrogen stations on strategic axes, and work to reduce the still very high costs of hydrogen vehicles. On the Dunkirk side, it is of course above all industrial needs that are driving discussions around the development of hydrogen. Furthermore, the projects and ambitions of our Belgian and Dutch neighbors concerning the massive production of hydrogen are leading to specific reflections in Dunkirk around cooperation opportunities. On the industry side, in a region with large consumers of hydrogen, we are looking at how to use waste hydrogen and the production of carbon-free hydrogen, without forgetting storage to make hydrogen a link at the heart of tomorrow’s energy systems. A massification of renewable energies will be necessary to reduce these costs; the roadmap provides the perspectives necessary for this purpose. We are project initiators. For this, the Region also has concrete financial tools made available to players in the sector, such as Cap3RI, SEM Énergie or the FRATRI (Regional Fund for the Amplification of the Third Industrial Revolution, endowed in 2021 with 23 million euros). The Region has financed via FRATRI, since the start of Xavier Bertrand’s mandate, 550 projects relating to Rev3 out of a total of 1,260 projects co-financed with ADEME. »
“We help large and small businesses, craftsmen, municipalities and farmers. Our role is to democratize and therefore scale up the energy transition. At the same time, the Region also has a role in informing the general public, at a time when the acceptability of projects is sometimes difficult. We also carry out actions to encourage the development of professional training and apprenticeships. Our objective is also the creation of numerous jobs in the region. »
Production d’EnR
“To produce carbon-free hydrogen, we already have a very (and too!) large onshore wind farm and we do not want to see it develop further, because we want energy diversity with a significant share of nuclear (including the new promising technologies in this area), gas and solar. »
“We are lucky to have large mining wastelands that are unusable for agriculture or real estate, but which can constitute potential large-scale photovoltaic farms, with 10 or 30 hectares in one piece. We therefore launched a census of this land with the Hauts-de-France Public Land Establishment. Solar developers from the South of France, lacking land, have come to us. At the same time, we have identified 4 million square meters of building roofs. We have launched a call for expressions of interest for a first tranche of 340,000 square meters of roofing and a first operation is underway in 76 high schools in Hauts-de-France: our objective would be to be able to have localized production of solar panels. in Hauts-de-France. We will also work on underwater production (with wave energy for example), which seems quite promising. The Region encourages innovations such as the ion/sodium battery resulting from research work by the LRCS at the University of Picardie Jules-Verne, and developed by the start-up Tiamat, or even G+Lyte for photovoltaic solar. On the biogas side, in addition to the methanization collective, we have a potential deposit of 13 billion cubic meters under the old mines; in fact, all mine galleries release methane through vents. We are trying to convince the State to allow the recovery of this enormous deposit in Hauts-de-France. The Region actually holds the levers to reverse the fossil energy/green energy cursors. The energy transition, as its name suggests, cannot be done in a day, because we must not destroy industry by making it bear too heavy an energy cost. As a result, we are not doctrinaire, but pragmatic in setting up a viable and relocated economic sector, whether in maintenance, in production, in use, counting on all the players. Because we will always be smarter together! »
