The international HySPARK project, led by ORLEN in collaboration with a consortium of 17 global partners, has become the first in Poland to receive funding from the EU Clean Hydrogen Partnership programme. According to the release issued by ORLEN, close to EUR 9 million will be allocated to the production and testing of hydrogen-powered vehicles for Chopin Airport and Warsaw’s public transportation system.

The innovative hydrogen vehicles produced under HySPARK will be fuelled by hydrogen supplied from ORLEN’s HUB in Włocławek. A refuelling station at Chopin Airport is set to be established in 2026, thanks to funding from the European CEF Transport AFIF Clean Cities Phase II programme. Hydrogen-powered buses will be provided by ARTHUR BUS, hydrogen-powered trucks by Quantron, and ground handling equipment for Chopin Airport by the Italian company ATENA. The vehicles will be used by the municipal bus company Miejskie Zakłady Autobusowe of Warsaw, ORLEN, and LS Airport Services.

"Hydrogen is a safe, alternative energy source and a key element of the transformation that will undoubtedly play a vital role in transportation. Several local governments in Poland are already using buses powered by hydrogen from ORLEN, and in Poznań, we have deployed our first publicly accessible hydrogen refuelling station for passenger cars. A next step will be to test ground handling vehicles at Chopin Airport and public transport buses in Warsaw. The development and expansion of hydrogen fuels require substantial investments, so I am pleased that our consortium has secured EU funding for this purpose," said Grzegorz Jóźwiak, Head of the Hydrogen Technology and Synthetic Fuels Office.

HySPARK (Hydrogen Solutions for euroPean Airports & Regional Kinetics) involves extensive collaboration among 17 partners from five countries: Poland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

"HySPARK is a unique initiative that combines the essential competencies needed to achieve the goals of the Polish Hydrogen Strategy. The consortium’s efforts, including the significant involvement of entities within the Mazovian Hydrogen Valley, will greatly contribute to the decarbonisation of transport, and the project’s deliverables are expected to serve as a model to be replicated in other cities. Plans to use the project’s outcomes to build hydrogen ecosystems around other European airports were already included in the grant application preparation stage," added Prof. Jakub Kupecki, Director of the Institute of Power Engineering – National Research Institute.

Research and development activities within the project will be supported by IEN-PIB, Warsaw University of Technology, RINA, and Bureau Veritas Polska.

HySPARK is part of the Mazovian Hydrogen Valley Cluster, which already includes 48 partners representing research institutes, universities, as well as public and private enterprises. The goal of the Mazovian Hydrogen Valley is to create a regional hydrogen ecosystem that will connect hydrogen producers with technology providers and end-users in various sectors, including transportation (using hydrogen as fuel in vehicles) and industry (using hydrogen for producing synthetic fertilisers).

ORLEN’s plan is to build an international network of over 100 hydrogen refuelling stations spanning Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia to serve private, public, cargo, road and rail transport by 2030. Hydrogen will be delivered through a European chain of hydrogen hubs powered by renewable energy and innovative facilities converting municipal waste into zero- and low-carbon hydrogen.

The ORLEN Group’s total electrolyser capacities are to reach about 1 GW by 2030, which, combined with the waste-to-hydrogen projects, will allow it to produce more than 130 thousand tonnes of renewable hydrogen annually by the end of this decade.