The international HySPARK project, led by ORLEN in collaboration with a consortium of 17 global partners, has become the first in Poland to receive funding from the EU Clean H₂ Partnership program. Close to €9 MM will be allocated to the production and testing of H₂-powered vehicles for Chopin Airport and Warsaw’s public transportation system.

The innovative H₂ vehicles produced under HySPARK will be fueled by H₂ supplied from ORLEN’s HUB in Włocławek. A refueling station at Chopin Airport is set to be established in 2026, thanks to funding from the European CEF Transport AFIF Clean Cities Phase II program. H₂-powered buses will be provided by ARTHUR BUS, H₂-powered trucks by Quantron, and ground handling equipment for Chopin Airport by the Italian company ATENA. The vehicles will be used by the municipal bus company Miejskie Zakłady Autobusowe of Warsaw, ORLEN and LS Airport Services.

“H₂ is a safe, alternative energy source and a key element of the transformation that will undoubtedly play a vital role in transportation. Several local governments in Poland are already using buses powered by H₂ from ORLEN, and in Poznań, we have deployed our first publicly accessible H₂ refueling station for passenger cars. The next step will be to test ground handling vehicles at Chopin Airport and public transport buses in Warsaw. The development and expansion of H₂ fuels require substantial investments, so I am pleased that our consortium has secured EU funding for this purpose,” said Grzegorz Jóźwiak, Head of the H₂ Technology and Synthetic Fuels Office.

HySPARK (H₂ Solutions for euroPean Airports & Regional Kinetics) involves extensive collaboration among 17 partners from five countries: Poland, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Over the coming years, they will work to establish a H₂ distribution market in central Poland. The business aspects of the project will be coordinated by ORLEN, while administrative, research and development aspects will be managed by the Institute of Power Engineering, National Research Institute (IEN-PIB).

“HySPARK is a unique initiative that combines the essential competencies needed to achieve the goals of the Polish H₂ Strategy. The consortium’s efforts, including the significant involvement of entities within the Mazovian H₂ Valley, will greatly contribute to the decarbonization of transport, and the project’s deliverables are expected to serve as a model to be replicated in other cities. Plans to use the project’s outcomes to build H₂ ecosystems around other European airports were already included in the grant application preparation stage,” said prof. Jakub Kupecki, Director of the Institute of Power Engineering – National Research Institute.

Research and development activities within the project will be supported by IEN-PIB, Warsaw University of Technology, RINA and Bureau Veritas Polska. Information dissemination about the project will be managed by, among others, the City of Warsaw, Agencja Rozwoju Przemysłu S.A., the Fundacja w Klimacie foundation, and two international airports: SEA Milan Airports and Aer Arann Islands. The project has also received support from TOYOTA Central Europe, the Polish Aviation Group, ANWIL, the Transport Technical Supervision Authority, Gdańsk Airport, and the Polish New Mobility Association.

HySPARK is part of the Mazovian H₂ Valley Cluster, which already includes 48 partners representing research institutes, universities, as well as public and private enterprises. The goal of the Mazovian H₂ Valley is to create a regional H₂ ecosystem that will connect H₂ producers with technology providers and end-users in various sectors, including transportation (using H₂ as fuel in vehicles) and industry (using H₂ for producing synthetic fertilizers).

ORLEN’s plan is to build an international network of over 100 H₂ refueling stations spanning Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia to serve private, public, cargo, road and rail transport by 2030. H₂ will be delivered through a European chain of H₂ hubs powered by renewable energy and innovative facilities converting municipal waste into zero- and low-carbon H₂. The ORLEN Group’s total electrolyzer capacities are to reach about 1 GW by 2030, which, combined with the waste-to-H₂ projects, will allow it to produce more than 130,000 tpy of renewable H₂ by the end of this decade.