LuxHyVal in 2026: building Luxembourg’s first Hydrogen Valley step by step

Hydrogen valleys do not appear overnight. They are assembled piece by piece: through industrial ambition, public strategy, academic leadership, technical realism, and a willingness to turn conversations into commitments. In Luxembourg, that process began several years before the LuxHyVal project officially started, when a set of separate initiatives began to converge around a common idea: that renewable hydrogen could become a practical tool for decarbonising industry and mobility in a small but highly connected country.

What is now known as the Luxembourg Hydrogen Valley was therefore not born from a single announcement or funding call. It was brought into being through a sequence of decisions, partnerships, studies and people who saw that Luxembourg had both a need and an opportunity. Today, LuxHyVal stands as a flagship effort to build an integrated hydrogen ecosystem linking production, storage, distribution, industrial use, mobility applications, digital tools, public engagement and future replication.

The first ingredients: industrial vision, national context and a new chair

One of the earliest foundations was a strategic decision by Paul Wurth, together with the University of Luxembourg, to create a new endowed professorship focused on renewable hydrogen and advanced low-carbon technologies. Paul Wurth committed €1 million over the first five years to support this initiative, establishing what would become the Paul Wurth Chair in Energy Process Engineering. That decision mattered because it created something more durable than a short-term project: it created institutional capacity.

Around the same period, Luxembourg’s wider energy and industrial context was also shifting. The country had clear decarbonisation needs, especially in sectors where direct electrification is difficult or incomplete. The LuxHyVal concept later crystallised around exactly these needs: replacing fossil-based hydrogen in industry, supporting cleaner mobility, improving energy resilience, and connecting hydrogen to a broader decarbonisation strategy.

At the University of Luxembourg, that endowed chair was not left abstract. Following an international recruitment process, Bradley Ladewig joined from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in April 2022 as the inaugural Paul Wurth Chair in Energy Process Engineering. That appointment gave the emerging hydrogen effort a focal point inside the university: someone able to connect engineering, strategy, consortium building and proposal development. In hindsight, this was one of the decisive moments in the story. Luxembourg now had not only industrial interest and policy momentum, but also an academic platform capable of helping coordinate them.

From feasibility to possibility

At about the same time, Paul Wurth was also doing something equally important outside the university. It worked actively with leading industrial companies in Luxembourg to build a consortium and co-finance a feasibility study on the concept of producing renewable hydrogen locally to support decarbonisation of industry and mobility. The study was carried out by Geprolux, supported financially by the participating companies and with additional backing from Luxembourg’s Ministry of the Economy.

This feasibility work was crucial because it transformed a promising idea into something more concrete. It asked whether local production of renewable hydrogen, closely linked to major users, could work technically and economically in Luxembourg. The answer was not that everything would be effortless. Rather, the study showed that with public funding support, such a facility could indeed be feasible. That distinction is important. Hydrogen valleys are not built on wishful thinking; they are built on credible pathways that connect policy support, demand, infrastructure and risk-sharing.

The feasibility study did more than produce a report. It created confidence, aligned key actors, and gave a future proposal a serious evidential base. It also helped identify the natural Luxembourgish core of a future consortium. Because many of the most relevant industrial and energy actors had already been involved in the feasibility stage, they were already at the table when the hydrogen valley idea matured into a European bid.

Building the consortium that could carry the idea

Turning a feasibility study into a successful European proposal required another step: building a consortium strong enough to deliver not just a project, but a hydrogen valley with credibility. Here again, several streams came together.

The University of Luxembourg provided substantial support for proposal development, including internal funding that enabled the recruitment of an expert consultant to strengthen the bid preparation process. Several European firms were assessed competitively, and R2M Spain was selected to support proposal writing. That choice proved important enough that R2M later also joined the consortium, where it now supports communication, dissemination, exploitation and replication activities.

Additional European partners were then brought in through a mix of existing collaborations and professional networks. Some were known through hydrogen and membrane research communities; others through previous project collaborations. The consortium that emerged was unusually broad but also unusually coherent. Alongside Luxembourg-based industrial, mobility, energy and research actors, it included partners contributing environmental assessment, social acceptance research, digital twin development, international market analysis, and follower-valley replication in Czechia and Ukraine.

That breadth is one of LuxHyVal’s real strengths. From the outset, the consortium was designed not as a loose collection of beneficiaries, but as a system: industry users, mobility operators, energy providers, engineers, social scientists, digital experts and replication partners all contributing to one integrated vision.

From proposal to project

Using the outcomes of the feasibility study, the LuxHyVal bid was prepared for the call of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership. The proposal was written, submitted, positively evaluated and invited into grant agreement preparation. That success marked the transition from ambition to implementation.

But a large consortium also brings organisational demands of its own. Considerable attention was therefore given from the beginning to coordination structures, project management, data management, communication channels, reporting systems and consortium-wide planning. LuxHyVal established structured project management practices, regular consortium meetings, general assemblies, shared collaboration spaces and close coordination across all work packages. Project management staff at the University of Luxembourg, including Anastasiia Gafiullina and, later, Riccardo Scalia, played an important role in helping the project move from startup into steady operation.

Formally, LuxHyVal began on 1 November 2023. From the outset, work focused heavily on building the foundations for delivery: business models, an extended feasibility study, mobility business models, early design and safety planning, communication structures, stakeholder mapping and the first steps toward the digital twin. At the same time, LuxHyVal quickly began reaching a wide stakeholder community through its website, social media, newsletters and engagement activities, while also advancing the business case, off-taker discussions and preparations for renewable electricity sourcing backed by Guarantees of Origin.

A public launch for a shared ambition

Soon after the project’s formal start, LuxHyVal was launched publicly at the University of Luxembourg in the presence of major institutional and industrial figures. That event mattered because hydrogen valleys succeed only when they are visibly shared enterprises. Luxembourg’s hydrogen effort was never intended to belong to one organisation alone. It has always depended on collaboration between university, industry, infrastructure providers, public transport operators, government and European partners.

The symbolism of the launch was fitting: participants gathered in front of a hydrogen fuel cell bus. It was a reminder that the Luxembourg Hydrogen Valley is not only about molecules and megawatts. It is also about visible, practical decarbonisation in daily life, from industrial process gas to buses on public routes.

What gives LuxHyVal its strength now

The project’s strength today remains what gave rise to it in the first place: the consortium. LuxHyVal was conceived as a full-chain hydrogen ecosystem, and that design remains central. Local green hydrogen production, storage and distribution; industrial and mobility end uses; guarantees of renewable electricity; digital twin-supported planning and operation; social acceptance work; public engagement; education and training; and replication in follower valleys all form part of the shared vision.

Already, important progress has been made. Work is advancing on business models, feasibility refinement, public perception research, stakeholder analysis, communication channels and digital twin development. LuxHyVal is designed to go beyond infrastructure alone. A major public-facing digital twin is planned, built on open and interoperable principles, to support planning, optimisation and public understanding. Social research is also underway to assess how hydrogen is perceived in Luxembourg and what kinds of communication and participation will be needed to build durable trust. These strands are not peripheral. They are part of the valley itself.

Replication is another defining feature. LuxHyVal is meant not only to work in Luxembourg, but to generate lessons for other regions. Czechia and Ukraine are already embedded as follower valleys, with project objectives aimed at translating Luxembourg’s experience into locally adapted hydrogen valley strategies.

And throughout this whole story, the role of Paul Wurth has remained unusually important and consistent: first helping drive the early feasibility study, then supporting the Paul Wurth Chair at the University of Luxembourg, and now serving as a core consortium member in the technical delivery of the project. In many ways, that continuity captures the whole LuxHyVal story: an idea that was not merely discussed, but steadily carried forward.

A valley still in the making

The Luxembourg Hydrogen Valley is not a finished object. It is still being built, organisationally, technically and socially. Yet that is precisely what makes this moment so significant. By 2026, important milestones are expected as the project moves further from planning into visible implementation. The business case has been strengthened, public support mechanisms have advanced, stakeholder engagement has grown, and the project’s technical and governance foundations are strong.

For those who have been part of the story from the beginning, that is deeply rewarding. It is rare to see a hydrogen valley from its earliest conceptual roots through to consortium formation, European and national funding success, public launch and operational preparation. LuxHyVal is the result of long-term institution-building, careful partnership development and the simple but demanding work of aligning many actors around a shared future.

That future is now taking shape in Luxembourg.

 

Author

Prof. Dr. Bradley P. Ladewig. Coordinator of LuxHyVal project. Vice-Dean of FSTM, Full professor of Engineering. University of Luxembourg.

Funding disclaimer

The LuxHyVal project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101111984 and is co-funded by the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking.