IN4climate.NRW in the Rhenish Lignite Mining District – IN4climate.RR for short – is a joint project of IN4climate.NRW (an initiative of NRW.Energy4Climate) and the Wuppertal Institute. Its aim is to strategically flank and support the transformation of industry in the Rhenish Lignite Mining District towards climate neutrality. To this end, the numerous industry-oriented projects and research topics in the Rhenish Lignite Mining District are placed in a large, overarching framework, embedded in the overall transformation of the industry of North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the neighboring states and neighboring federal states, and individually strategically networked and accompanied.
The focus of the content will be the work in three Future Labs, which will concentrate on central transformation focal points in the Rhenish Lignite Mining District:
- The Future "Lab Industrial H2 Utilisation" will work on the necessary direct and indirect use of hydrogen for industrial transformation. The goal of the Future Lab is to establish the Rhenish Lignite Mining District as Europe's first hydrogen region that realises production, infrastructure and logistics as well as large-scale utilisation in an integrated manner for climate-neutral value creation. In parallel with the hydrogen industrial strategy, the entire Rhenish Mining District is being developed into a model region for hydrogen ("RHynisches Revier"). This will also include issues of hydrogen mobility and hydrogen use in buildings.
- In the Future Lab "Circular Value Creation in Industry", research is to be carried out into the possibilities of linking a large number of different process and material utilisation chains, going beyond the consideration of individual (raw) materials.
- In the Future Lab "Carbon Economy", the project participants are working on dealing with process-related quantities of CO2 and exploring the potential for establishing new value chains in the Rhenish mining area.
The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag.
