Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Successful applicants will receive assistance from one of the contractor consortium companies in the form of time from a dedicated consultant and project manager, to enable them to develop detailed work plans for their hydrogen project.The budgeted time available is expected to be in the range 40-85 person-days in total.

Advice will be provided on a wide range of issues, including technical, legal and financial support. The contractor aims to provide support in creating:

• A Project Delivery Group of stakeholders representing the entire value chain of the proposed project, and the management of this group as necessary.
• Initial concept papers, setting out the overall objectives of the project, scope of activities, budgets, key tasks, procurement strategy, responsibilities of partners, and timescales.
• Working Groups to deliver various aspects of the project.
• Detailed project plans, including detailed descriptions of the applications to be deployed, where specifically they will be rolled out, for how long, how many units, siting and sizing of infrastructure, potential suppliers of major items, and identification of end users.
• Detailed project budgets showing capital and operational expenditures, and contingency allowances.
• Financing and funding plans describing how revenues will cover expected costs and the timing of expenditures and incomes.
• Strategies and best practise for procuring hydrogen infrastructure and vehicles, including opportunities for joint procurements with other territories to minimise costs.
• Letters of commitment, to be signed by senior representatives of the stakeholders involved

In order to be considered for the selection process, the applicants and EOI must meet the following criteria:

• EOI must be completed in English
• EOI must be submitted before the deadline via the web interface
• EOI must be submitted by a public authority located within EU member states or associated countries
• The region must agree to share lessons learnt during the process of PDA and implementation with observer regions
• The region must agree to provide feedback on the quality of PDA services
• The region must have a pre-existing concept for a FCH project
• The project must be planned to commence implementation within 12 months of the end of PDA
• The project must have contacted stakeholders already on board who could be responsible for project implementation
• A personal contact responsible for communication with the FCH 2 JU and contractor must be named on the application
• The projects must have a minimum expected budget of € 5 million
• The public authority must be willing and able to co-finance the project
  If an application does not meet any one of the above requirements it will not be considered for PDA support.

We are looking for projects with a budget of at least € 5 million.If you don’t have a budget for you project yet, we have provided a standardised list of equipment capital costs to help you estimate an expected budget.

No, the source of co-financing is not conditioned. Co-financing resources could mean either resources form the region itself or from other sources, as long as co-financing is present. However, applicants for PDA-Services should include the information or explanations on the sources proposed to be used in their application.

Our online application form asks several short answer questions to help us understand your project and determine if it meets our eligibility criteria. There are also three free text answer questions (1000 words each) that ask you to describe:

• The motivations and regional context for your project
• The planned hydrogen technology deployment for your project
• The support required for your project

These long answer questions are allocated the most potential marks and will help us determine if your project meets our selection criteria.

Projects that aim to implement technology where hydrogen is used as a form of energy storage or fuel can apply for PDA.You will be asked to categorise your project under one of the following hydrogen applications:

• Heavy-duty transport applications: includes trains, buses and heavy-duty trucks
• Light- and medium-duty transport applications: includes cars, vans, garbage trucks, sweepers, construction mobile equipment/tools, material handling/forklifts, bikes and scooters
• Maritime applications: ships/ferries/boats and port operations equipment
• Stationary applications: combined heat and power, hydrogen boilers, hydrogen for industry

Please categorise your project according to the hydrogen application that is expected to use the highest quantities of hydrogen.

Completed application forms and supporting documents should be submitted by 12.03.2020 23:59:59 p.m. on our website. General queries regarding the application and evaluation process, or selection and eligibility criteria should be directed to: info@fch-regions.eu . Please note that in the interest of fairness we will not be able to respond to queries relating to a specific application, unless for a specific legal reason.

Application and supporting documents may only be submitted through the project website. Following submission, the applicant will receive a dated email response confirming that their application has been received and giving the details of their application.

If you don’t receive an email confirming the reception of your application within one working day, please contact the our team by sending an email to: info@fch-regions.eu .

If you encounter technical problems, please contact our team by sending an email to: info@fch-regions.eu .

Be aware that only technical advice may be provided and no answers to questions concerning the content of your application will be possible.

The assessors will only consider information included in the application in their evaluation; additional information outside of the specified questions and word counts will not be considered.

The following criteria will be used to evaluate each application. Evidence to support a projects ability to meet these criteria should be discussed in the application form free text answers.

• Level of ambition and scale of the project
• Strategic drivers for the project
• Level of project maturity
• To what extent the project is realistically deliverable
• Level of commitment to delivering the project
• Replicability and impact of the project for the progress of FCH technology in Europe
• Whether the project requires the support on offer
• Local stakeholder involvement in the project
• Level of innovation the project brings to the market – this could include new players, business models, technologies or hydrogen applications

Public authorities in the understanding of this project are defined as public individual or groupings of local authorities, municipalities, cities, provinces, regions or public bodies.

Yes, PDA services are also available in the UK.
UK entities are eligible to participate and apply to the call for expression of interest and will also remain eligible during the implementation of the services.

If you are not sure, how your region is defined in the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), please proceed with the following steps to find out:

1. Follow the link: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tercet/locality.do
2. Click on “NUTS 3” in the blue menu.
3. Select “NUTS 2016” from the “NUTS version” drop-down menu.
4. Select the country in which your region is located from the menu “Country”.
5. Enter the name of your region in the field: “Search string”.

If your region is a NUTS 2/3, this is indicated by displaying a table below the search mask with the NUTS 1, 2 and 3 codes and the type of area of your region.

If “No data found” is displayed below the search mask, click on “LAU” in the menu highlighted in blue and repeat steps 3 – 5. If your region is a LAU, this is indicated by displaying a table below the search mask with the LAU code, NUTS 1, 2 and 3 code and the type of area of your region.

If the search field shows “No data found” again, please check for spelling mistakes and repeat steps 2-5 for NUTS and LAU. If you cannot find your region, select the next highest administrative unit your region is located in.

Applications from neighbouring regions with similar goals and timeframes, governed by more than one public authority will be considered.

All applications that pass our eligibility criteria will be assessed according to the following procedure. First, the short answer questions will be anonymously evaluated. Each of the five contractor consortium companies will then score all of the free text answers against the selection criteria. Applications will then be ranked by total score, both overall, and within their application category.

There will initially be 10 places available for successful applications. One of our aims is to provide PDA to at least two EU13 member states, and so the first two slots will be filled by the top two applications from EU13 regions. We will then fill the following four slots with the top applications from each category, should they have not yet been chosen. The remaining slots will be filled by the remaining applications in order of their score, with no more than 5 projects in the same application category being selected. The projects ranked from 11–15th will then be placed on a reserve list, including at least one EU13 Member State according to the same process as was used above.

Once the final list of 10 projects to receive PDA has been decided the amount of time allocated to each project will be based on the needs of the individual project (rather than the ranking). Time allocated to each project is expected to vary between 40 and 85 person-days. The budget for this will be set out at the kick off meeting for PDA support.

The assessors will not contact any of the applicants during the assessment process unless for a specific legal reason.

Once the final list of successful projects, reserve projects and unsuccessful projects has been confirmed, applicants will be informed of the status of their application. Applicants will not be informed of their ranking.

Feedback reports on each submission will be sent to the applicants.

Successful applicants will be invited to a meeting with the other selected projects and the contractor to kick-off the PDA process. After this meeting, a budget for the amount of time for the consultant and project manager allocated to the project and budgeted amount of time required will be determined.

Unsuccessful applicants will be invited to observe the results of PDA through our observer network, and will be provided with materials to assist them in project development.

In the event that one of the selected projects is unable to fill their obligation, or that there is additional budget available after the first 10 projects have defined their budget, one of the reserve regions will be selected for PDA.

This will not be based on ranking but instead on fitting the expected timeframe and budget of the project with the time and budget available.

Following the completion of PDA, regions are expected to go ahead with implementation of the work plans developed within 12 months. This delay allows for projects to apply for funding and complete any other administrative requirements. ‘Implementation’ will involve signing work orders, purchase orders and other contracts with project stakeholders.

Regions should only apply for PDA should they fully intend to go ahead with implementation within 12 months of PDA completion, however should a project be delayed due to unforeseen issues, there will not be consequences from the contractor or FCH 2 JU.

Regions will be expected to provide feedback and lessons learnt on any barriers to implementation to the observer network and the FCH 2 JU.

We will only accept applications written in English.

Selected projects are expected to share details of the progress of project development and lessons learnt with the observer network, throughout the course of PDA and after its completion.

Regions receiving PDA will be twinned with observer regions looking to develop similar projects, and expected to regularly communicate with these regions in order to enhance their progress.

Commercially sensitive information is expected to be shared only in general terms

The observation network will be a group of local authorities/regions across Europe who are interested in developing strategy and work plans for the deployment of hydrogen technologies in their region.Members of the network will benefit from regular updates and lessons learnt from PDA support, as well as connections to similar projects in various stages of development and suppliers of FCH equipment.