The northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna has unveiled plans to host a tender for the construction of green hydrogen production facilities in abandoned industrial areas.

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Projects would be relatively small, at 1-10MW, but the aim is to stimulate local demand for renewable hydrogen in industries such as petrochemicals, ceramics, cement and paper, and in logistics and local transport — especially those sectors “which today use fossil hydrogen for non-energy purposes and which cannot be completely electrified”, the regional council said.

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The legislature aims to approve the tender by the end of January — for areas identified by local authorities and the federal Ministry of the Environment and Energy security as abandoned or decommissioned.

“Several abandoned areas are located near important and particularly energy-intensive production centres, such as the port and logistics, chemicals, petrolchemicals, glass, ceramics, cement, heavy agriculture, mechanical engineering and [those] related to the health supply chain,” said a statement by the Emilia-Romagna regional council.

The region has received €19.5m ($21m) from the national government’s post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan to help support the tender — the details of which have not yet been revealed.

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Vincenzo Colla, the councillor in charge of economic development and the green economy in the region, described the initiative as “a strategic challenge to be taken without hesitation, especially at a time when energy costs risk putting the world of manufacturing into difficulty”.

“The region firmly believes in hydrogen as a clean energy vector of the future. For this reason, we are ready to support large-scale production activities capable of demonstrating the convenience of electrolysis for energy-intensive industries, logistics and local transport,” he said.

“Furthermore, the use of decommissioned industrial areas allows the recovery of abandoned land and thus closes a virtuous cycle which avoids the need for new greenfield sites by exploiting already urbanised spaces.”