German-Taiwan bilateral R&D project
Green hydrogen and its downstream products are central to the transformation of today's fossil fuel dependent energy supply chain to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To enable the de-fossilisation and establishment of a global green hydrogen economy, it is necessary to overcome the fundamental scientific-technical, societal and economic challenges in a global context. In this context, a bilateral R&D project, Materials and Concepts for a Green Hydrogen Vector (MacGyver), is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC, Taiwan) to address these challenges.
The MacGyver project is strategically organized in terms of three Focus Projects, which are Green Hydrogen Production, Green Hydrogen Logistics, and Green Hydrogen Usage for the De-Carbonization and De-Fossilization. Key scientific experts from three major research organizations from Germany, includes Forschungszentrum Jülich of the Helmholtz Association (FZJ), Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max Planck Society (FHI), and Fraunhofer-Institut für Umwelt-, Sicherheits- und Energietechnik (Fraunhofer-UMSICHT) and 13 leading research Universities from Taiwan, includes National Central University, National Taiwan University, National Taiwan university of Science and Technology and National Tsinghua University etc., are cooperating in a synergistic fashion to cover from materials science and electrochemistry over process engineering to systems engineering.
The project kick-off meeting was hosted by the NSTC in Taipei, Taiwan, from 26 to 28 November, in combination with visits to three strategic research partners in the Taipei area, including the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the National Central University and the National Taipei University of Technology, in order to intensify the interpersonal and scientific exchange. This partnership between Germany and Taiwan will be further strengthened by the upcoming 18 exchange students over the next 3 years, each of whom will spend at least 9 months in Germany.
In addition, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger-A. Eichel is in continuous contact with the Net-Zero Emission Committee (Net-Zero Emission Advisory Board for the Taiwan Government) and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, Taiwan) on the basis of the Living Lab Energy Campus project (FZJ, Gemany) and the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (ITRI, Taiwan) to explore possible cooperation in the fields of microgrids and energy generation and storage due to the high degree of similarity between the two projects in order to further intensify the research partnerships with Taiwan.