Hamburg and Fukushima to cooperate on wind power and hydrogen production

The German city of Hamburg and Japanese prefecture of Fukushima want to strengthen their cooperation within the development and use of renewable energies. Hamburg hopes to learn from Fukushima's experiences with transforming wind energy into storable hydrogen in an effort to make northern Germany a hydrogen "hotspot". In return, Fukushima hopes to profit from Hamburg's expertise in renewable energy, particularly wind. To that end, Hamburg's first mayor Peter Tschentscher and Fukushima's governor Masao Uchibori have signed a memorandum of understanding, which should serve as a basis for engagement and support for companies within the fields of renewable energies, energy efficiency, storage technologies and hydrogen economy in both countries. The Japanese region that has been hit by a nuclear disaster in 2011 wishes to expand its wind farms in order to produce hydrogen to operate the fuel cell buses that will be used at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Hamburg is aiming to become home to the world's largest hydrogen electrolysis plant, the city announced in September. A final decision on whether to build the plant, which would have a capacity of 100 megawatts (MW), is set to be made by the end of 2020. Together, Germany's northern coastal states are planning an initiative to bring hydrogen production to an industrial scale through optimising the use of wind power in the region. Using renewable electricity to produce fossil fuel substitutes could solve some of the Energiewende’s toughest challenges, such as energy storage and heavy-duty freight transport.