Hydrogen Technologies are Becoming a Reality

Combustion engines destroy the environment and fuel prices withdraw much more money from our wallets. How will the sustainable transport look like in the future? Will it help to achieve a carbon neutrality? This is more and more questionable within society. The transport as we know today is no longer sustainable and humans must seek alternative sources. One alternative for the future of transport is hydrogen technology.

Under the Paris Convention, which was also supported by Slovakia, the European Union has made a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. The commitment has been also reflected in the Action Plan for the Hydrogen Strategy of Slovakia. According to the latest publicly available version of the document, Slovakia should invest less than a billion euros in hydrogen technologies and the funds should be allocated not only from the Slovak budget, but also from European sources. In addition, the private sector should contribute EUR 1.5 billion.

The action plan envisages nine thousand cars and almost three hundred hydrogen buses on our roads by 2030. The most promising in terms of the use of hydrogen technologies currently seems the public transport. The sketched vision is beginning to take on real contours. The first Slovak hydrogen bus, which is exhibited at the World Expo Dubai 2020, is recently joined by a low-floor city hydrogen bus with low consumption and a range of 400 km from the Slovak Technology Start-up company, which would like to produce up to 250 buses by 2025.

„Responsible energy policy requires alternatives and a contingency plan. Hydrogen could be one of the option. This the reason why we have decided to organise the International Hydrogen Conference. We would like to learn from the best experts, and therefore it is important that at the upcoming conference, the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Mr. Daren Tang, will present the state of the art of inventions and patents in this area.“ explains Mr. Matúš Medvec, the President of the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic. The International Conference Hydrogen Technologies in Transport – Ready for the Future! takes place on May 17 and 18, 2022 at the Sheraton Hotel in Bratislava.