The Bembibre Town Council is one of the partners in the SHAREDH2-Sudoe project, a European initiative that will test renewable hydrogen as an energy storage solution in local energy communities between 2024 and 2026. The municipality of Bierzo Alto will develop a pilot project in this area that will enable the transformation of surplus energy from the Local Energy Community into renewable hydrogen for use in agriculture and small-scale personal mobility.
‘With this project, we aim to take advantage of the energy surpluses of energy communities to produce green hydrogen, which would be used mainly in rural areas,’ explained Andrés Álvarez, Councillor for Works, Urban Planning and Industrial Promotion in Bembibre.
The SHAREDH2-Sudoe project is directly related to the Bembibre Sostenible Local Energy Community, which recently received a grant of €260,822 from the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge. The energy community, which is led by Bembibre Town Council, will equip five municipal facilities with solar infrastructure for public and private energy supply.
However, in the event of an energy surplus, feeding it into the grid will not generate any economic benefit for the Town Council, which is why this avenue of energy use is being opened up to produce renewable hydrogen. Initially, as a pilot project, it will be used for small-scale applications with a view to extending it to a much larger scale.
‘This means that we would be placing our Council at the forefront of advancing technical and scientific knowledge of green hydrogen, which is already the immediate future of energy storage.’
Bembibre’s participation in the SHAREDH2-Sudoe project means being part of a European collaboration network to attract initiatives, investment and training in renewables and hydrogen; to implement pilot projects; and to offer economic and employment opportunities in the region.