Hydrogen will be an important energy carrier in the future. However, to make the future Hydrogen Economy fully sustainable, renewable resources instead of fossil fuels have to be employed for hydrogen production. The concept of HYVOLUTION is based on the exploitation of bacteria, which freely and efficiently produce pure hydrogen as a by-product during growth on biomass.
The reward of this approach, which started in the Fifth EU Framework Programme project Biohydrogen, will be enormous since it allows the greatest reduction in CO2 emission and provides independence of fossil imports. Both topics are dominant in all global agreements on climate protection and because of the urgency in mitigating the greenhouse effect, it is of prime importance to start this research now. The technologies developed as a result of the research in this Integrated Project will be commercialised post-2015. This will be in time to facilitate the transition to mass hydrogen markets, even more so since the European Commission has set an objective of 20% substitution by bio-fuels in the road transport sector in 2020. Hydrogen as an alternative motor fuel is seen in FP 6 as a market coming to maturity in 2015–2020.