ARTICLE 1 – ORGANIZERS
The HYDROGEN TROPHIES competition was born in 2019 at the initiative of the founders of Hydrogenium magazine with the support of France Hydrogène and the ADEME. The 2024 edition of this national and free competition will be held from March 1, 2024 (beginning of acceptance of candidacies), through September 10, 2024 (date of the Award Ceremony). It is organized by the Groupe CAYOLA – Les Editions du développement durable, 3 quai Conti 78430 Louveciennes (SIRET 830 632 485 00017) (hereafter referred to as “the Organizer”) in collaboration with the European Energy Transition Conference (Assises Européennes de la Transition Energétique or AETE).
The Hydrogen Trophies Award Ceremony will be held on Tuesday September 10, 2024, at the Dunkirk Kursaal Conference Centre.
The Organizer is represented by Emeline Santerre, Director of the Editions du développement durable [Sustainable Development Editions], assisted by Sousdary Singhavara, General Management Assistant, and by competition co-founders André Asse and Leiko Sakuraï.
ARTICLE 2 – AIM OF THE CONTEST
The Hydrogen Trophies reward innovative projects or corporations that have conducted noteworthy projects in the following fields:
- Creation of a low-carbon or renewable hydrogen industrial sector
- Development of renewable energy storage capabilities thanks to hydrogen
- Development of zero-emission solutions for road, rail, waterway or aeronautic transportation.
This contest is open to corporations and/or groups of corporations in the hydrogen energy sector, as well as to communities.
ARTICLE 3 – PRIZE CATEGORIES
3.1 Specific project prizes
On the condition that there is a sufficient number of candidates, the Organizer will award eight specific project prizes and one specific technology prize, for a total of nine specific prizes:
1) Low-Carbon or Renewable Energy Industry Prize
This prize awards the creation of a low-carbon or renewable hydrogen production method prioritizing industrial uses. It is conferred on a project utilizing renewable energies or retrieving industrial hydrogen that is considered unused, for the installation of a hydrogen production unit. The year’s project will award the rollout of a prototype, a demonstration unit or a commercial tool that presents true innovation whether in terms of technologies, dimensions, power, constraints, integration, services …
2) Renewable Resource Storage and Valorisation Prize
Awarded to a company that has successfully developed renewable energy storage capacities. The prize will pay tribute for example to an electrolyser that can immediately provide services to electric grids and or that contributes to the autonomous supply of a site, a district, an island, particularly where there is a need for resilience, and a new outlet for the development of renewable energies. The year’s project will award the rollout of a prototype, a demonstration unit or a commercial tool that reveals true innovation whether in terms of technologies, dimensions, power, constraints, integration, services …
3) Rail, Aeronautic, Maritime or Fluvial Transport Prize
This prize awards the development of zero-emission projects or solutions for rail transportation, aeronautic mobility, and for fluvial or maritime transportation. This strategy for reducing the carbon footprint can concern passenger or merchandise transportation services, materials for the maintenance of infrastructure or professional personnel transport, merchandise distribution logistics, or logistics concerning on-board food services and/or maintenance of the cold chain thanks to hydrogen technologies. The prize will pay tribute to the establishment of a new organization or the use of new technologies offering true improvements in the deployment of local hydrogen transport ecosystems, particularly in respect to trains for everyday use, for aeronautic equipment, or for fluvial or maritime fleets.
4) Terrestrial Merchandise Transportation Prize
This prize awards the development of zero-emission projects or solutions for the transportation of merchandise by road. This strategy for reducing the carbon footprint can concern forklifts, bicycles, tricycles, light commercial vehicles weighing less than 3.5 tons or heavy commercial vehicles weighing up to 44 tons for the transportation of merchandise over short, medium or long distances, road maintenance materials, innovative vehicles, or vehicles for the professional transport of urban logistics personnel for the distribution of merchandise and/or maintenance of the cold chain thanks to hydrogen technologies. The prize will pay tribute to the establishment of a new organization or the use of new technologies offering true improvements in the deployment of local hydrogen transport ecosystems, particularly in respect to professional vehicle fleets.
5) Passenger Transportation Services Prize
This prize awards the development of zero-emission projects or solutions for the transportation of passengers by road. This strategy for reducing the carbon footprint can concern shared cargo bicycles, tricycles, light or heavy vehicles measuring up to 18 meters for the transportation of passengers in urban or interurban zones, baggage maintenance materials, road maintenance materials and/or vehicles for the professional transport of personnel and/or passenger food and comfort services thanks to hydrogen technologies. The prize will pay tribute to the establishment of a new organization, a transport service or the use of new technologies offering true improvements in the deployment of community hydrogen transport ecosystems, particularly with respect to professional vehicle fleets.
6) Awareness, Education and Training Prize
Awarded to an educational project for technological innovation or an informational program that arouses the interest of a young public and raises the awareness of young citizens concerning climate and environmental issues as well as careers in hydrogen and sparks enthusiasm for job prospects in this sector, particularly thanks to entertaining or discovery activities or assistance for professional or vocational orientation.
7) Industry Decarbonisation Prize
This prize awards the development of a project or solution for the decarbonisation of the French economy using renewable, low-carbon hydrogen. This strategy for employing hydrogen technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of the some of the most important sources of industrial emissions on the national level may concern such fields as steel, cement, fertilizers, synthetic fuels, etc. The prize will pay tribute to the establishment of a new organisation or usage of technologies offering a real improvement in the framework of the deployment to all major industrial fields of “hydrogen hubs” supplying low-carbon, competitive hydrogen to industrial players or promoting the development of new decarbonised industrial activities.
8) Communal Transition Prize
Presented to a community for its dynamism in implementing projects and inciting collaborations between local entities in the field of hydrogen. The prize will pay tribute to a structuring commitment and a role of initiator and catalyser for the community by banking on the community’s renewable resources coupled with the possibilities of hydrogen. The jury will award the role that the community plays in mobilizing its companies, laboratories, local governments and NPOs through the establishment and promotion of a process, a roadmap or concerted efforts. The coherence of this process with the organization of the community and its planning, energy and environmental policies will be a key point.
9) Emerging Technological Solution Prize (NEW)
This prize awards the development of an innovative decarbonization solution using one or more emerging technologies offering a real improvement for the decarbonization of one or more sectors of the French economy, including services.
3.1 bis Special Jury’s Favourite Prize
At the request of the jury, the Organizer reserves the possibility of granting a special prize in addition to the nine specific prizes.
This prize may be granted to a project that has not been awarded one of the nine specific prizes. It will award a project considered ground-breaking and audacious and deserving the support of the jury.
3.1 ter Person of the Year Prize
The jury will present this prize to a person whose actions or determination have contributed to the development of the hydrogen sector. Each jury member will designate their choice candidate to the Organiser in advance.
The Organizer will have an internationally acclaimed artist create an original contemporary sculpture symbolizing the energy transition toward a decarbonised, appeased society, to be presented at the ceremony to the “Hydrogen Person of the Year” selected by the jury.
The artist and/or their editor agree that the original sculpture awarded to the winner at the ceremony will then be exhibited to the public in a place accessible to the public to be selected by the winner for a period of two years.
After this period of public exhibit, this original may be auctioned by the editor and the amount of the opening bid determined by the auctioneer, minus the auctioneer’s fees and the auction expenses, shall be donated in its entirety to an organization of the winner’s choice working in the field of the environment. If the opening bid is not reached, it can be reduced for a new auction. If the amount is exceeded, the excess shall be paid to the winner.
3.2 A single project may be entered in a maximum of two specific prize categories.
Candidates may enter several different projects. In this case they must fill out separate entry applications for each of the projects and each of the selected categories.
3.3 The candidates will select to enter the category they believe corresponds best to their project. However, the Organizer or the jury may enrol the candidate in a category other than that for which it has applied if it deems the project more suited for a different category.
3.4 The Organizer reserves the right to maintain, eliminate or merge several Prizes according to the number of entries received and their quality.
3.5 The candidates should take care that duplicate applications are not turned in by their subsidiaries or partners, and in the case of consortium projects, indicate the business name of the entities.
ARTICLE 4 – APPLICATIONS
To enter and participate in the contest, the candidate must imperatively:
- Be a legal entity in the private sector whose headquarters or main premises are located in Europe, or a public or non-profit organization whose headquarters are located on French territory, excluding any firms belonging to the Organizer, any firms belonging to one of the sponsors, and any firms or partner local governments contributing to the organization of the contest.
- The actual person acting in the name of or on behalf of the legal entity guarantees that they have the legal competence to financially and legally commit the legal entity for which it is acting, and that the legal entity will be bound by the terms of these regulations.
- The projects must have been launched after January 1, 2022, and the candidates must demonstrate this.
- To be accepted, projects must have been started, that is, either financed or have had the investment decision validated by the European Commission, State, or public or private investor, or have been launched, by December 31, 2023.
- The entry application should be completed online at the following link: https://hydrogenium.eu/candidatez/ application form in French / in English
- The properly completed application must be validated by May 10,2024, at the latest.
All entry applications that are filled in and validated after the indicated deadline and/or incomplete applications or applications exceeding the number of requisite additional items (see the “Candidates/To apply” section on www.hydrogenies.eu) will be rejected.
The jury reserves the right to contact the representative of the candidate for ad hoc questions of understanding, clarifications, etc.
ARTICLE 5 – COMMITMENT OF THE CANDIDATES
5.1 Prior to sending their entry application, candidates are required to obtain all the necessary authorizations for the reproduction and representation of the elements in their application (particularly but not limited to: brands, drawings, photos, copyrights, videos, patents, industrial know-how, etc., including those of contractors that may have intervened in the relevant operation, etc.) at the time of the Awarding of the Prizes and in all media, regardless of type, liable to cover the 2019 Hydrogen Trophies for promotional or informational purposes, as well as for reproduction by the Organizer on promotional documents for future Hydrogen Trophies contests. These uses must be possible without any obligation whatsoever on the part of the organizing firm.
The candidate firms guarantee the Organizer they will not make any appeal in this matter, and the Organizer may not be held responsible in any case for disputes related to the intellectual or industrial property attached to one of the elements of the application for participation in the contest.
5.2 The Organizer commits to not divulging any information considered confidential by the candidate, who shall specifically indicate this in the entry application. This information shall only be made known to the persons in charge of organizing the contest (the Organizer’s employees, experts and contractors, members of the jury) and for the sole purposes of organizing the contest, selecting the winners and providing communication concerning the contest.
ARTICLE 6 – PRESELECTION COMMITTEE / JURY / RESULTS / CEREMONY
6.1 Preselection Committee
All the applications will be examined by a preselection committee consisting of at least two members of the contest Organizer. The committee will pre-select a maximum of 10 entries from each of the 8 categories to be presented to the jury (hereafter referred to as the “Nominees”).
The committee will base the preselection in particular on the following criteria:
- Degree of maturity of the project;
- Range: the scope of the project (in particular participation in the establishment of extensive local ecosystems) in relation to the observed repercussions: technical, economic (in particular concerning the major challenge of scalability and the reduction of costs), industrial (in particular the efficient contribution to the reindustrialization of our nation and the mutualization of uses and needs), and/or social (local job creation, access to hydrogen for the most people possible) or environmental (reduction of CO2 emissions);
- Efficiency: the originality of the innovative approach.
The Nominees will be informed of their selection by e-mail sent to the addresses indicated in their application.
They pledge not to divulge any information concerning the category of their nomination to third parties until the date of the award ceremony.
The Nominees must be present at the award ceremony to receive their prizes if they are designated the winner by the jury.
The Nominees will receive an invitation to Hydrogénies, the Hydrogen Trophies ceremony, which for the 2024 edition will take place on September 10, 2024 in the large amphitheatre of the Dunkirk Kursaal Conference Centre.
6.2 Jury
The jury will meet on the premises of the MEDEF International Hydrogen Task Force, or any other place chosen by the Organiser. Contest winners will be designated from among the Nominees (maximum 10 nominees per category) by a jury consisting of a president and a session secretary selected from among the permanent members of the Jury, and members invited from among recognized figures in the energy transition field, to be selected by the Organizer after consultation with the representatives of the ADEME and France Hydrogène as permanent jury members.
The permanent members in 2024 are:
- For elected officials: Valérie Nouvel, Claire Bourgeois-République and Alain Leboeuf
- For regional officials: Jean Gravellier (Haut-de-France) et Nathalie Loch (Bourgogne-France-Comté)
- For the academic and research area: Olivier Joubert (CNRS Nantes), Pierre Serre-Combe (CEA) Philippe Mandin (Université de Lorient-Institut de recherche Dupuy de Lôme), Pr. Marie-Cécile Pera (FC LAB-Université de Franche-Comté – UFC)
- For the nonprofit association sector: Michael Diderich (Hydrogen Europe)
- For the professional trade press: Laurent Meillaud, journalist, TV host and editor (Hydrogen Today, France Hydrogène Newsletter)
- For the industrial sector: Valérie Bouillon-Delporte (Michelin)
- For former prize winners: Olivier Savin (2023 Hydrogen Person of the Year)
- For the competition’s Organizer: André Asse and Leiko Sakurai.
Members invited to sit on the jury for the 2024 edition may include, with the agreement of the other jury members:
- For the financial sector, a representative of a national cooperation and investment bank from one of the G20 member nations
- From the European Energy Transition Conference (AETE), a member of the organizing committee in one of the member cities
- A former competition winner
- One or several industrialists or technology consultants, excluding representatives of one of the sponsors of the 2024 edition of the competition and of one of the companies entered in this edition or any company belonging to them
- One or several European, national or local elected officials, excluding representatives of one of the communities entered in this edition or any company belonging to them.
The Jury will designate its president at the beginning of the session.
Jury deliberations will be strictly confidential, and the jury will not be obligated under any circumstances to justify its choices. Each member thus pledges to strictly respect the choices of the jury, in writing.
Members invited to sit on the jury will not be able to participate in voting for a category in which their company either has an entry or is involved, whether directly or indirectly. They will be requested to abstain from voting in this category.
The jury will designate the winners of the nine specific prizes and the Person of the Year Award, with the understanding that the jury reserves the right to designate dual winners or no winners. In the case of ties, the jury president has the authority to decide.
The winner or winners will be designated based in particular on the following criteria:
- The scope of the project in relation to the technical and industrial repercussions.
- The scope of the project in relation to the economic repercussions (growth and export).
- The scope of the project in relation to the social repercussions (local job creation).
- The scope of the project in relation to the environmental repercussions.
- The originality of the innovative approach.
- Impact on the measures of the National Hydrogen Strategy and the deployment of decarbonized hydrogen on industry, the storage of renewable energy, mobility and communities.
- Territorial replicability.
6.3 Results
The results will be announced to the public the day of the award ceremony, which will be held on September 10 in Dunkirk, unless the Organiser decides to hold a press conference for the gathered winners ahead of time.
6.4 Award ceremony proceedings
The president of the jury will present the Hydrogénies (the name of the trophies) in person to the winners that will be designated at the official Hydrogénies, the Hydrogen Trophies ceremony.
The ceremony may be placed under the patronage of a governmental institution. The Organizer will be the sole judge of this decision.
When receiving their prizes, the winners will be granted two minutes and a half of speaking time to remind the audience, consisting of leading figures and players in the hydrogen and energy transition sectors, of their project, their innovation, their vision of the stakes and the solutions proposed by the company or organization they represent.
A dedicated communication campaign will relay the information on the winners to partners and to both the specialized and general media.
There will be a cocktail reception after the ceremony to allow the members of the institutions and media as well as the industrial, economic and financial partners to exchange with the winners in a convivial setting.
The ceremony will be filmed by a professional TV team. A teaser with French subtitles will be available to be put online on event sites and spaces of the media and partners.
ARTICLE 7 – USE OF THE NAME “HYDROGEN TROPHIES”
Only the prize winners are authorized to use the “Hydrogénies, the Hydrogen Trophies 2024” name and logo in the forms and under the conditions notified by the Organizer on institutional, commercial and promotional documents concerning the company and/or the winning program(s). This authorization is granted for a period limited to three years from the date the prize was awarded.
ARTICLE 8 – PERSONAL DATA
In accordance with European regulations concerning the protection of data, information of a personal nature collected within the scope of participation in the contest will be collected and processed by the Organizer. This data, which is necessary to manage the participation of the candidates in the contest, will be integrated in the database of the Organizer and/or that of any other company belonging to the Organizer. It will be retained the time required for the organization of the contest in a computer file that the Editions du développement durable or any other company in the Groupe CAYOLA may use to send propositions for similar products or services.
In accordance with the French Data Protection Act of January 6, 1978, modified by the act of August 6, 2004, candidates have the right to access, rectify, modify and delete all data concerning them by addressing an e-mail to Mr. André Asse at the following address:
contact@hydrogenies.eu
ARTICLE 9 – REGULATIONS – LITIGATION
The act of enrolling in the contest implies the acceptance without reservation and the respect of the provisions of these regulations, which are accessible at any time during the duration of the contest on the following internet site: https://hydrogenies.eu/presentation/reglement or on demand to the Organizer during the duration of the contest by postal or electronic mail to the following address:
Groupe CAYOLA
Les Editions du développement durable
3, quai Conti
78 430 Louveciennes
contact@hydrogenies.eu
ARTICLE 10 – MISCELLANEOUS
10.1 – Any entry application that contains irregularities, which is not completely filled in, that has not been sent within the regulation time or has not been validated by the candidate will be considered null and will not be taken into consideration for the contest.
10.2 – The Organizer reserves the right, particularly in cases of force majeure, to shorten, extend, suspend, modify or cancel the contest.
10.3 – The candidates, nominees and winners authorize the Organizer, in advance with without financial compensation, the use of their name, logo, image and the first and last names of their representatives as well as the elements of their awarded entry application for promotional, publicity or informational purposes (in particular for the Organizer’s events and paper and/or web publications), and this faculty shall not be the source of any obligation whatsoever with regard to the Organizer. They guarantee the Organizer against any recourses in this regard.
10.4 – The Organizer shall not be held responsible for any dysfunctions of the postal service (delivery delays or losses) or for the total or partial destruction of the entry applications for any other unforeseen reasons. In the same way, the Organizer shall not be held responsible for any dysfunctions of the Internet network over which it has no control that might prevent the electronic validation of the entries.
10.5 – The Organizer shall not be held responsible for any dysfunctions of the 25th European Energy Transition Conference (cancellation or rescheduling due to force majeure, for national internal security reasons, or due to a pandemic) or for the total or partial destruction of the buildings housing the event by any other fortuitous cause. Likewise, the Organizer shall not be held responsible for any dysfunctions, in whole or in part, of the transportation network which it does not control and that would prevent the event from being held at the scheduled dates and times or from being held at all.
10.6 – The entry applications will not be returned.
10.7 – These regulations are subject to French law. The Organizer shall rule without appeal on any difficulties that may arise in the interpretation and/or application of these regulations.