Report third (online) event NAG & RHIA about Hydrogen

Themes

• What financial instruments are there for hydrogen initiatives? R&D programs in Europe and The Netherlands like Clean Aviation, Clean Hydrogen and Growth Fund Groenvermogen NL
• Which existing consortia would like to make use of this?
• Which consortia could/should we still form?

Purpose

• The aim of this event was to include SMEs, in particular to identify their potential role in the transition of the market to aircraft with hydrogen-based propulsion and to help to focus their R&D and business development activities on this and to identify cooperation opportunities, networking, forming consortia and discover ideas for follow-up sessions.
• A first exploration in the run-up to a so called SME Challenge of RHIA (March 10th)

Program:

Jan Verbeek, Vice Chairman NAG/Partner Knowledge Management and Innovation at ADSE  kicked off the meeting and gave an explanation of the purpose of the meeting.

After that there were three presentations

• Frank Wokke, Business Manager Aerospace Systems Royal NLR & Tim Buiting, Manager Government Programmes Royal NLR “Opportunities in Clean Aviation and Clean Hydrogen”
• Peter Lucas, Innovation Manager Hydrogen TU Delft “Growth fund Proposal GroenvermogenNL”
• Marlie Koekenberg, Director Commercial Aerospace Programs at Toray Advanced Composites “Liquid Hydrogen Composite Tank for civil aviation – the best of Dutch industries and institutes in one unique consortium”

After the presentations, all participants were given the opportunity to share their ambitions/challenges in the field of hydrogen and how they could/would like to contribute to joint initiatives.

SME Challenge

To give all new initiatives a chance, RHIA organizes an SME Challenge on March 10th. Jules Lancee, program coordinator at RHIA gave an explanation of the set up of the SME Challenge

• The challenge is to couple large organisations to SME’s or vice versa. The exact set up of the challenge is still open: an issue or a question coming from a large company where SME’s can offer solutions, or an idea from an SME that needs cooperation with large companies and other SME’s to become successful. RHIA likes to hear how they can help companies to accelerate their ambitions. What are the challenges to overcome to make hydrogen in aviation not only possible but also economically viable and what solutions can we jointly work on? It can have to do with: technology, legislation issues, safety & security, the new operation protocols etc.
• Interested parties can contact Fabienne de Hilster, communication manager at RHIA f.dehilster@stichtingrhia.nl to participate or to contribute to this challenge and bring in their ambitions or challenges. This is an open call.

At the end of the meeting, Jan Verbeek shared the following conclusions:

• There are a couple of Instruments coming available on both the European and National Side (Clean Aviation, Clean Hydrogen, Growth Fund proposal Groenvermogen NL) which give opportunities to find funding together and work together on projects (and proposals to start them)
• It is good to make the international connection to the OEMS’s, equipment manufacturers and other end customers (airlines, airports) around the world:
  • Feedback links to end users as KLM may potentially be available;
  • We have end users like Embraer at the table;
  • We have connections to all kind of industry current clients;
• There are a lot of opportunities to focus not only on the technology development side but also on joint business development. Who knows who, who knows how and what are the interests/needs from the people further up or down the value chain. That could help address technology, certification, business needs and supply chain alignment topics. What we can do together is much wider than if you only look from your own company perspective;
• The recording of the session will be used to collect all the suggestions and discuss them with NLR, TU Delft, RHIA and NAG. They will make a first grouping of companies and academia that may be have a direct or indirect need for each other’s know how and bring that together to form proposals. They will try to fit them in the MKB Challenge format with two meetings in the upcoming months.
• We also have the sand pit format in the Growth Fund Groenvermogen NL that Peter Lucas presented were we can bring people together to really join forces and do a joint definition phase;
• The HAPPS consortium had a very successful two days joint definition phase of the system applications and what they need to do in modification of the aircraft. They did that with different companies, institutes and perspectives to get a better focus on what is the real challenge and how can we cooperate. This pressure cooker approach bringing people together from different disciplines and companies really helps to accelerate the process;
• Jan Verbeek calls on the participants not to wait if they see opportunities to align with others. Take an action, but keep RHIA & NAG informed to prevent double actions where we better focus on working together.