Orlen has launched its second nationwide publicly accessible hydrogen station in Katowice. Fuel for the Silesian station is supplied from the hydrogen hub in Włocławek, which opened this year. The ORLEN Group has a total of four publicly accessible hydrogen fueling stations: in Poland (Poznań and Katowice) and in the Czech Republic (Prague and Litvínov).
The hydrogen station in Katowice is located at a traditional Orlen station at 22 Murckowska Street, on the city’s exit route towards the A4 motorway. The facility operates 24/7 and is publicly accessible, meaning all users of hydrogen-powered vehicles can use it. The station is equipped with two dispensers: one with a pressure of 350 bar for refueling buses and trucks, and another with a pressure of 700 bar for refueling passenger cars. The installation has a capacity of at least 630 kg of hydrogen, allowing the refueling of, for example, 20 buses and 5 passenger vehicles per day.
Clean Cities
The facility in Katowice is part of the Clean Cities – Hydrogen Mobility in Poland project, co-financed by EU funds under the CEF Blending Facility and funds from the NFOŚiGW program – “Support for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure and Hydrogen Refueling Infrastructure.”
In June this year, Orlen opened its first publicly accessible hydrogen station in Poznań. The facility, in addition to passenger vehicles, powers a fleet of 25 buses belonging to the Municipal Transport Company in Poznań daily. A year earlier, the company launched a pilot hydrogen station at the Wola Duchacka bus depot in Krakow, where municipal buses are also refueled.
Additional hydrogen stations in Bielsko-Biała, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Wałbrzych, Krakow, Włocławek, Gdynia, Piła, and Warsaw will be gradually commissioned in the coming years. These facilities will be built under the second phase of the Clean Cities – Hydrogen Mobility in Poland project. The third phase plans the construction of 16 more stations, for which Orlen received a record non-refundable EU grant of 62 million euros in April this year.
By 2030, the Orlen Group plans to build a network of over 100 hydrogen fueling stations for individual, public, and freight transportation, both road and rail, in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Hydrogen will be supplied to them through the construction of a European network of hydrogen hubs powered by renewable energy sources and innovative installations converting municipal waste into zero- and low-emission hydrogen.
In August this year, the international HySPARK project, implemented by ORLEN and a consortium of 17 partners, became the first in Poland to receive funding from the EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership program. Funds amounting to nearly 9 million EUR will be allocated, among other things, to produce hydrogen vehicles and test them for the needs of Chopin Airport and Warsaw public transport.
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