Thüga: Getting into the hydrogen economy – cooperatively
Thüga, Germany’s biggest network of municipal utility companies, is certain that hydrogen will be indispensable in decarbonising the country’s energy and heat supply. It’s counting on this green energy source in other sectors as well. The “Thüga H2 Platform” assists its partner companies’ hydrogen projects in many ways.
Transforming local gas distribution networks to green gases like hydrogen will be crucial for the energy and heating transition, and will make a key contribution towards achieving climate targets.
In Hohenwart, near Ingolstadt, Germany, Thüga and its project partners Energie Südbayern and Energienetze Bayern are leading the pack. In a pilot project there, they’ve converted an existing gas distribution network to 100 percent hydrogen. It’s been supplying ten private homes and one commercial customer with green heat since September 2023, for an initial phase of 18 months – a unique achievement in Germany!
With H2Direkt, the partners are demonstrating that fossil natural gas can likely be replaced with climate-neutral green hydrogen. The advantage: the conversion takes relatively little construction outlay. All the components of the existing network and heated spaces are checked for H2 compatibility and verified by experts. The only equipment that needs to be replaced is gas heaters and meters. A feeder system was built on site.
“The past heating season showed that the changeover to hydrogen worked splendidly”, said Dr Christoph Ullmer, head of the Innovation Competence Centre at Thüga AG.
Hydrogen will be indispensable for decarbonising heating in Germany, Ullmer believes. A great many buildings are simply not suited for a heat pump. “So it only makes sense to also keep the door open for the hydrogen option – especially because we can use the existing gas network for the purpose”, he explains. “We need both options, so we can choose the best solution for each building in the heat transition.” H2Direkt is subsidised with funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, as part of the TransHyDE model project. TransHyDE evaluates and tests hydrogen transport solutions.
Infrastructure planning, holistic decarbonization concepts with a focus on medium-sized companies and the identification of anchor customers are among Thüga's most important aspects in the field of hydrogen.
The Thüga Group’s energy utilities are also looking into hydrogen’s potential for uses in generation, procurement, distribution, and storage. “Wind power and solar arrays are dependent on weather, so domestic generation of hydrogen will be volatile. That’s why we’ll need storage capacity”, Ullmer points out.
The hydrogen economy needs more cooperation
To provide the association’s municipal utilities with an easier entry into the hydrogen economy, Thüga and eleven companies from the Group have set up a “Thüga H2 Platform”. Its tasks include knowledge transfer, communicating with the municipalities that own shares of the Thüga utility companies, and technology scouting. Last but not least, here Thüga’s experts also advise the Group’s companies on developing entire hydrogen ecosystems that include not just generating and using hydrogen, but also recycling the heat generated during electrolysis.
Cooperation – among companies and among industries – will be absolutely necessary anyway in setting up the hydrogen economy in Germany, Ullmer says. “We’ll only be able to accomplish this Herculean task together. If everybody goes their own way as they have before, we won’t get far”, he’s certain. He advocates setting up a consortium that will take charge of the chequebook, so as to solve the chicken-and-egg problem for investing in hydrogen generation and use. Most of all, he sees the greatest responsibility lying with business. “Government needs to set up the right framework. But in the end, industry are the only ones who can take action.”
Blog Article on Thüga, Dr Christoph Ullmer
