MoZEES Innovation Forum 2022 was organized in Oslo on 16 November and gathered about 50 participants. The meeting focused on how Norwegian industry and associated partners can join forces to realize and commercialize new energy technology and services for zero emission heavy duty transport solutions. In the introduction of the meeting the Chairman of the MoZEES Innovation Committee, Geir Brekke from Statkraft, indicated that Norwegian industry seem to be better on innovation than commercialization, which indicates that it is important that we join forces to commercialize our innovations.

More R&D on realistic use cases for heavy-duty transport

André V. Gaathaug from USN presented results from the HyTUNNEL-CS (hydrogen in tunnels and confined spaces) and recommendations on how to make hydrogen powered vehicles safer. The project showed that there are some hydrogen safety challenges that need to be solved to reduce the consequences of incidents with heavy duty vehicles in tunnels. Fredrik Aarskog from TECO 2030 asked for more R&D on realistic and representative user cases on heavy duty transport, where the various alternatives are evaluated with the same conditions. There is a need of technology neutral facts, where the total cost must be included for all value chains. Alexandre Nordvik in Statkraft showed results from calculations made on charging times and energy cost, including the energy loss in transformation at the end user. These kinds of cost analyses must reflect capacity, cost, and grid utilization rates Statkraft sees a considerable advantage of building infrastructure for both electric and hydrogen operated vehicles in parallel. Nordvik strongly recommended that analyses and calculations must consider Norwegian or Nordic conditions and to keep in mind that there is a considerable difference between Europe in general and Norway specifically. Hence, the conclusions made for zero emission heavy-duty transport in Europe do not necessary apply for Norway.

Best practice open sources to improve basis for decision making

The discussion showed that there is still significant uncertainty about the range of battery-operated heavy-duty vehicles under various operational and load conditions. The industry asked for more research where all assumptions are available and where the best options with reference to LCA (life cycle analysis), TCO (total cost of ownership), energy efficiency, social economy, and even the EU taxonomy are considered. To improve the basis for decision-making there is a need for high-quality models built on best practice open sources and visible assumptions including development of cost of the various parts of the infrastructure including uncertainties for the various factors.

As expected, it was not possible to fully answer the main question for the MoZEES Innovation Forum 2022: How can Norwegian industry and associated partners join forces to realize pilot project and commercialize new energy technology and services for zero emission heavy duty transport solutions? However, a conclusion and recommendation from the meeting is that it is important to be open minded and necessary to continue to develop the heavy-duty transport chains for batteries and hydrogen in parallel. In summary, most of us learned something new and we were all reminded that that dialogue and cooperation is key to innovation and commercialization.

The program for the meeting can be downloaded here