Thanks to funding from the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in five Polish cities, ZE PAK and the Polsat Plus Group will build new hydrogen refueling stations.
On February 21, the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management signed with PAK-PCE STACJE H2. which is part of the ZE PAK Group and the POLSAT PLUS Group, an agreement under which the beneficiary will receive a subsidy of PLN 20 million. By the end of June 2024, hydrogen refueling stations will be built in another five cities in Poland: Wrocław, Rybnik, Gdańsk, Gdynia and Lublin. Such investments contribute to facilitating the refueling of clean vehicles and improving air quality. The co-financing was granted under the priority program of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management “Support for infrastructure for charging electric vehicles and infrastructure for refueling with hydrogen.”
The aim of the program “Support for charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and hydrogen refueling infrastructure” is to develop infrastructure that reduces the number of vehicles emitting CO2 and NOx and thus improves air quality. The beneficiaries of the program will be local governments, entrepreneurs and cooperatives, as well as housing communities and individual farmers.
As part of the project, five hydrogen stations will be built in Wrocław, Rybnik, Gdańsk, Gdynia and Lublin. The facilities are to be built by June 30, 2024, when the station is scheduled to start operating and hydrogen fuel will be sold. The construction of the station is to enable the refueling of vehicles using electricity for propulsion. This energy will be obtained from hydrogen, which is becoming an alternative to the traditional method of obtaining fuel from crude oil.
“We want more hydrogen stations to be built all over Poland. We are particularly interested in the development of ecological transport in large cities. This will reduce CO2 and NOx emissions, which in turn will improve air quality. ZE PAK is another Polish company that will benefit from the program prepared by the Ministry of Climate and Environment together with the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, supporting the development of hydrogen refueling infrastructure. The ZE PAK hydrogen stations, which will be built in five cities, are an important element of the hydrogen economy ecosystem,” said Ireneusz Zyska, Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment, Government Plenipotentiary for Renewable Energy Sources.
As he pointed out, transport is one of the first areas where hydrogen will be widely used. “I congratulate ZE PAK on its business courage in implementing innovative technologies in transport and thank the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management for supporting Polish entrepreneurs in this process. Recently, the fund signed a contract for co-financing the construction of hydrogen stations with PKN Orlen. These activities significantly strengthen the process of building a new sector of the economy, which translates into gaining competitive advantages by our entrepreneurs,” he said.
Artur Michalski, vice-president of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, stressed that the newly built hydrogen stations will be a great help for the organization of hydrogen public transport, and they are also a very innovative project. “This investment, in addition to many amenities, is also an excellent advertisement for this type of transport. Thanks to it, our way of moving will be more innovative and ecological,” he said.
According to the assumptions of PAK-PCE STACJE H2, in the initial period, it is planned to use about 30% of market capacity of each of the five hydrogen refueling stations, which will allow for over 10,000 refuelings of buses and other hydrogen vehicles. It is assumed that with the development of the hydrogen market in Poland, the use of hydrogen stations will increase by 2032 and reach a level of approximately 85%. Additionally, in the area of hydrogen transport, a project is being carried out aimed at the purchase of hydrogen locomotives, which will be used to transport hydrogen fuel.
The ZE PAK Group and the POLSAT PLUS GROUP are also implementing a project to build a hydrogen bus factory and an electrolysing plant producing hydrogen with the use of alkaline and PEM electrolysers. The ZE PAK and POLSAT PLUS Groups consistently implement their strategy aimed at building zero- and low-emission electricity generation sources and a full hydrogen economy value chain. The construction of a hydrogen refueling station is one of the links in this chain, which aims to maximize the dissemination of this fuel both among institutional recipients, such as municipal public transport facilities, as well as among individual customers who care about improving the environment.
