On 17 June 2026, the Green Energy Center Europe hosted the second H2CoVE Ecosystem Talk as part of the Green Energy Center Europe Close Codex Partner Meeting. The meeting brought together Close Codex Partners to exchange current status reports, present ongoing project activities and reflect on the next steps for the development of regional hydrogen ecosystems. Within this setting, the H2CoVE 2nd Ecosystem Talk focused on stakeholder validation, building on the stakeholder analysis results developed in 2025.
From Stakeholder Analysis to Stakeholder Validation
The H2CoVE project aims to strengthen hydrogen-related vocational excellence and skills development across European regions. For the Tyrol ecosystem, stakeholder analysis in 2025 provided an important basis for understanding the roles, needs, expectations and possible contributions of regional actors involved in hydrogen, energy system transformation, research, training, mobility and infrastructure development.
During the 2nd Ecosystem Talk, these findings were presented to the participating partners and discussed in the context of practical implementation experience at the Green Energy Center Europe. The objective was to validate the stakeholder analysis results with experienced regional actors and to examine how the identified stakeholder roles relate to real-world hydrogen ecosystem development.
The discussion confirmed that hydrogen skills development cannot be separated from infrastructure, operational learning and long-term cooperation. Training needs emerge where technology, regulation, business models, research, public strategy and regional implementation meet. This makes stakeholder validation a key step in translating analytical project work into practical regional action.
Learning from Ten Years of Green Energy Center Europe
The Ecosystem Talk took place in the same week as the tenth anniversary activities of the Green Energy Center Europe. Ten years after the opening of the GEC in Innsbruck during the first hydrogen journey from Norway to Italy along the Brenner Corridor, the Codex Partnership reflected on a decade of practical development work towards climate-neutral and autonomous energy systems.
The anniversary programme highlighted the long-term cooperation between Hyundai Austria, FEN Systems, FEN Research and the Green Energy Center Europe Codex Partnership. It also demonstrated how hydrogen mobility, competence development, Living Lab implementation and regional hydrogen economy initiatives have evolved through operational experience and sustained collaboration.
This context was highly relevant for H2CoVE, since this project is not only concerned with hydrogen as a technology, but also with the competences, organisational capacities and stakeholder networks required to build functioning hydrogen ecosystems. The Green Energy Center Europe Living Lab provides a practical environment in which vehicles, infrastructure, research, training and system integration can be understood as connected elements of one regional learning system.
The development path of the Green Energy Center Europe is closely connected to initiatives such as the Hydrogen Highway along the Brenner Corridor, HyWest, HyTrain, HyBus, Demo4Grid, FLEXI, REINFORCE and H2CoVE. These projects show that the transition towards a green hydrogen economy requires more than individual demonstration projects. It requires long-term learning environments, skilled people, resilient partnerships and the ability to connect regional implementation with European infrastructure and policy frameworks.
In this context, HyWest remains an important reference point for the Tyrolean hydrogen ecosystem. As one of the first operational models for a regional green hydrogen economy in Europe, HyWest demonstrated how production, logistics, refuelling and hydrogen-based mobility applications can be brought together in practice. The experience gained through such initiatives provides an important foundation for H2CoVE’s work on Centres of Vocational Excellence and regional skills ecosystems.
New Research Infrastructure at the Living Lab
Another relevant development discussed during the two-day meetings was the integration of new hydrogen research infrastructure within the REINFORCE EU Project into the Green Energy Center Europe Living Lab. Developed together by Codex partners FEN Research and EDC-Anlagentechnik, the new infrastructure enables green hydrogen to be produced, compressed, stored and used on-site in a quality-assured manner.
Together with the Hyundai NEXO vehicles operated by FEN Systems and other hydrogen applications connected to the Living Lab, this infrastructure creates a locally operated demonstration system for renewable hydrogen production and utilisation. For H2CoVE, such infrastructure is especially valuable because it connects technological development with training, applied research, stakeholder engagement and practical ecosystem learning.
Building the Skills Base for Hydrogen Ecosystems
The 2nd H2CoVE Ecosystem Talk confirmed that regional hydrogen transformation depends on the quality of cooperation between stakeholders. Public institutions, companies, research organisations, education and training providers, infrastructure operators and users each hold different responsibilities. Understanding these roles and validating them with the ecosystem is essential for developing relevant training pathways and supporting future implementation.
The Green Energy Center Europe Close Codex Partner Meeting offered a strong setting for this validation step. It connected the H2CoVE stakeholder analysis with the lived experience of partners who have worked for many years on hydrogen mobility, regional energy systems and Living Lab implementation.
The outcomes of the discussion will support the further development of the Tyrol H2CoVE ecosystem and contribute to the project’s broader European objective: strengthening hydrogen skills, vocational excellence and regional cooperation for the transition towards climate-neutral energy systems.