German companies to set up hydrogen cluster in Ingolstadt

A group of German companies from the gas, energy and oil industries are planning to build a hydrogen cluster in the greater Ingolstadt area, Bavaria, to support the decarbonisation of the industry in the region.

The partners include transmission system operators Energienetze Bayern GmbH & Co. KG, Bayernets GmbH and Stadtwerke Ingolstadt Netze GmbH (SWI Netze), municipal utility Stadtwerke Ingolstadt Energie GmbH, gas distributor Bayerngas GmbH, and oil refineries Bayernoil Raffineriegesellschaft mbH and Gunvor Raffinerie Ingolstadt GmbH.

Carmaker Audi AG, which has its head office in Ingolstadt, has also joined the partnership as a potential user of the hydrogen infrastructure.

As part of the project dubbed HyPipe Bavaria/H2-Cluster, the consortium will build a hydrogen infrastructure in the greater Ingolstadt area to supply industrial companies in the region. Refineries like Beyernoil and Gunvor as well as automotive companies like Audi will be able to use sustainable hydrogen in the near future to decarbonise their production processes. The hydrogen could be applied also in other sectors such as trade, transport and heating.

Bayernets, Energienetze Bayern and SWI Netze will play a key role in the project as they will convert existing gas pipelines to transport hydrogen and build a regional transport network to connect producers and consumers.

The consortium believes that the planned hydrogen infrastructure will be an essential step to reaching climate-neutral energy supply for the transport, industry and building sectors in the Ingolstadt greater area by 2040.

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