CAMPFIRE Alliance of the Northeast Region completes interim review and wins another 6 million in funding

In March, the CAMPFIRE alli­ance of the North-East region successfully completed the interim evalua­tion by a jury of experts as part of the BMBF program “WIR!-Change through Inno­va­tion in the Region. A further budget of 6 million euros was made available to the part­ners for this purpose. This means that CAMPFIRE tech­no­logy deve­lo­p­ment and an asso­ciated posi­tive change in the region through the deve­lo­p­ment of economic poten­tial in the field of hydrogen will receive a total of €52 million in funding within the frame­work of BMBF WIR!, in the lead project Trans­HyDE in the BMBF ideas compe­ti­tion “Green Hydrogen” and within the frame­work of FETProActiv through Horizon2020. The compre­hen­sive approach of CAMPFIRE has already resulted in a strong part­ner­ship of regional small and medium-sized enter­prises with a finan­ci­ally strong large-scale industry and scien­tific insti­tu­tions as well as an inter­na­tional visi­bi­lity of the region in hydrogen tech­no­logy in the last three years. In the current rapid market ramp-up of ammonia, tech­no­logy leader­ship is already expected within a short period of time and sustainable busi­ness models for ammonia tech­no­lo­gies should be available from 2025.

In the next three years, the partner alli­ance will focus on the entre­pre­neu­rial realiza­tion of the tech­no­lo­gies by the regional compa­nies active in the alli­ance and on enab­ling them to manu­fac­ture and globally market the new tech­no­lo­gies and products for the deve­lo­p­ment of a global hydrogen economy. Small and medium-sized enter­prises from the alli­ance region will be involved in the CAMPFIRE Open Inno­va­tion Lab (COIL) for the next three years for the realiza­tion of an indus­trial focus and subse­quent marke­ting of the deve­loped ammonia tech­no­lo­gies for Power-to-Ammonia and for Ammonia-to-Power. The main target groups are small and medium-sized enter­prises, start-ups and entre­pre­neurs from the plant engi­nee­ring, energy tech­no­logy, energy trading, special mecha­nical engi­nee­ring, ship­buil­ding and auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy sectors, who will benefit from the network of highly quali­fied scien­tific part­ners created by CAMPFIRE as well as from their rese­arch acti­vi­ties and prac­tical experience.

In view of the current wave of de-indus­tria­liza­tion in the region and the urgent need for action on climate protec­tion, as well as the threat of supply gaps due to the loss of Russian natural gas, the alli­ance has immense poten­tial to create a tech­no­logy base in the region for the crea­tion of a new ammonia industry with a future tech­no­logy rollout from MV.  As a pioneer for the deve­lo­p­ment of tech­no­lo­gies for ammonia, compa­nies in MV could in this way make a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to main­tai­ning the secu­rity of energy supply in Germany and, toge­ther with Euro­pean part­ners, lead the market ramp-up of ammonia for the energy transition.

Picture by Crystal Kwok on unsplash.com