The Ro-HydroHub green hydrogen project is a success story for any country and a challenge for the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Transformation, Minister of European Investments and Projects Adrian Caciu declared on Thursday, after the contract-signing ceremony for the construction of a Romanian hydrogen and new energy technologies hub, organized at the Victoria Palace of Government.

"This is yet another project whereby we demonstrate that the decentralization of European funds is the success story for any country and a challenge for the Research Ministry to already get used to laying out for the future, in the post-2027 Cohesion Policy, its own program. This program that we implement through the Ministry of European Investments and Projects could very well have been an independent program of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Transformation, because all the priorities are related to this field. Probably things were kept centralized due to the government's reluctance in time, until 2021, but when this happens, progress is slow, because there is a lot of work to do. This type of project, which implies a partnership between the government of Romania, the academic environment, local authorities and research institutes, is a model that must be perpetuated. I further encourage this type of partnership," said Caciu.

In his turn, Minister of Research, Digital Transformation and Innovation Bogdan Ivan stated that one of the most important features of this project is the technological transfer to the market.

"I am very pleased that we are able to announce this extremely important project, which comes with a fabulous funding of 130 million euros, for one of the most important research areas of the economy of the future. Practically, we can say that today we start the hydrogen engine of the Romanian economy. And from this point of view, the basic idea is that all the expertise and know-how resources of the experts in the labs of ICSI Ramnicu Valcea, the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca will not only stay there, but will spread from the lab to the market. The technological transfer to the market, to the nine SMEs that are partners to the project is one of the most important specifics of this project. So Romania will have its own patents, it will have proprietary know-how. I would very much want this project, once it reaches maturity, to be taken to other countries that are waiting for these new technologies," Ivan argued.

Deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacsu pointed out that hydrogen will definitely be the main element of the technology of the future, and that Europe has understood this priority from the very beginning and allocated resources on this line.

"Europe has set itself this ambitious goal of becoming, in not very many years from now, a greenhouse gas neutral continent - an extremely bold target in the medium term, but which, unfortunately, has overlapped with a not very favorable economic situation. We had the global crisis caused by the COVID pandemic, then we had a series of cyclical crises - the energy crisis, then the raw materials crisis, and last but not least the war in Ukraine, which primarily hit Europe and put us in a situation of loss of competitiveness. On the other hand, the economies of the United States and Asia do not have such conditionalities and, unfortunately, the effects are visible, the European economy stagnates in this period or does not achieve the envisaged growth," said Neacsu, who added that Romania is prepared to face the inherent challenges, mentioning its reindustrialization program as one of its major objectives.

"The program aims at the decarbonization of production processes and one of its important components is the production and use on the widest possible scale of hydrogen obtained from renewable resources and energy, and especially of the fuel derived from such green hydrogen. These are all important targets and obviously we will allocate substantial amounts for their accomplishment, but these are the practical objectives. (...) Obviously research is at the forefront of such concerns, whereas economy comes up with the applied part of research," said the official.

The EU-funded EUR 130 million contract for the construction of the Romanian Hydrogen and New Energy Technologies Hub - Ro-HydroHub was initialed on Thursday at the Palace of Government.

The RoHydroHub project was negotiated with the European Commission and was accepted as a predefined project under the Smart Growth, Digitization and Financial Instruments Program (PoCIDIF). The implementation of the project is ensured by a partnership formed by ICSI Ramnicu-Valcea and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. Throughout the implementation period, RoHydroHub will benefit from the support of the PoCIDIF Management Authority. AGERPRES (RO - authors: Daniel Badea, Mariana Nica; editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - editor: Simona Klodnischi)