Support for Discovering and Commercializing Local Hydrogen Specialized Companies with Excellent Hydrogen Technologies
Support for R&D Linked with Overseas Research Institutes ... Establishing a Foothold for Global Market Expansion
Pohang City will continue its ‘2024 Preliminary Hydrogen Specialized Company Development Support Project’ this year, following last year, to nurture hydrogen-related companies in the region as key players leading Pohang’s hydrogen economy.
A meeting last year on the Gyeongbuk Province Hydrogen Specialized Company Development Project reporting on the interim results of the '2023 Preliminary Hydrogen Specialized Company Development Support Project'.
This project, funded by Pohang City and Gyeongbuk Province and carried out by Pohang Technopark, supports technology development and commercialization for local companies possessing excellent hydrogen technologies and business items, aiming to cultivate them into representative hydrogen specialized companies of Pohang.
Hydrogen specialized companies are those confirmed by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy as having a certain proportion or more of sales revenue or investment amount related to hydrogen business out of their total sales, according to the Act on the Promotion of Hydrogen Economy and Hydrogen Safety Management.
Companies certified as hydrogen specialized companies can receive government support such as hydrogen-related technology development, commercialization, subsidies, and loans. Since the first implementation in June 2021, a total of 87 companies nationwide have been selected as hydrogen specialized companies up to last year.
In Pohang, in the first year of the project in 2023, seven companies including ‘FCI’ were selected, achieving remarkable results such as participation in domestic and international exhibitions like H2MEET (domestic) and World Smart Energy Week FC EXPO (Japan), filing new patents, job creation, and securing new contracts.
In particular, one of the selected companies, ‘Haps’, was designated as Gyeongbuk’s first hydrogen specialized company, which has greatly boosted the activation of the local hydrogen industry and investment attraction.
The ‘2024 Preliminary Hydrogen Specialized Company Development Support Project’ will provide a total of 390 million KRW to companies headquartered or with factories in Pohang (up to 5 companies), with support of up to 100 million KRW depending on evaluation results.
Especially this year, in collaboration with the German Fraunhofer research institute, excellent local companies will be given opportunities to participate in research on SOFC·SOEC ceramic materials and system performance improvement of PEMFC and alkaline water electrolysis.
Pohang City expects this to help local small and medium hydrogen companies with technological development capabilities but limited access to world-class research institutions by facilitating technology development cooperation networking, and further create stepping stones for them to pioneer overseas markets and grow into export companies.
Applications for the ‘2024 Preliminary Hydrogen Specialized Company Development Support Project’ can be submitted through the Pohang TP website until the 21st.
As Pohang City actively promotes the hydrogen fuel cell cluster construction project, it plans to launch the ‘Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cluster Company Council’ composed of companies wishing to move in during the first half of the year to promote investment attraction, inter-company exchanges, and discuss cluster growth strategies.
The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Certification Center within Pohang TP, accredited by the Korea Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (KOLAS) and the Korean Industrial Standards (KS) for hydrogen fuel cell certification, supports test evaluation certification and technology demonstration to accelerate market entry of domestic and international hydrogen companies.
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