IURC Study Visit to Jeju: Charting a Path to Scale Hydrogen Demand Together

The study visit by the IURC Community of Practice 3 (Hydrogen Market & Industry) to Jeju, Republic of Korea, took place from 14 to 17 September 2026, bringing together regional delegations from Île-de-France, Catalonia, Jeju, Osaka, Christchurch, and Taranaki for their first on-site programme since the community of practice launched in January 2026.

Hosted by the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province alongside the 2026 Green Hydrogen Global Forum at ICC Jeju, the visit combined high-level cooperation sessions, a hands-on “pre-hackathon” workshop, and site visits to Jeju’s green hydrogen production facility, refuelling station, and offshore wind farm. CoP 3 regions share a common ambition — accelerating green hydrogen deployment — but also common obstacles, from the cost of production to fragmented regulation and limited demand-side infrastructure. This visit was designed to surface those shared challenges directly from Jeju’s own experience as one of the world’s most advanced hydrogen “living testbeds,” and to begin shaping a joint roadmap toward the second phase of the Global Hydrogen Hackathon, to be held at Hyvolution Paris in January 2027.

Catalonia–Jeju Cooperation Special Session opens the visit

The programme opened on 14 September with the Catalonia–Jeju Cooperation Special Session, “Catalonia’s Hydrogen Ecosystem: Connecting Innovation, Industry and Global Partnerships.” Mr. Lee Chang-heum, Vice Governor of Jeju for Climate and Economy, welcomed the Catalan delegation and outlined Jeju’s ambition to become a “Climate Economy Capital” a route to carbon neutrality by 2035, while Dr. Sang-Jae Kim, Director of the Green Hydrogen Glocal Leading Research Center at Jeju National University, called for the partnership to “move from dialogue to action” in identifying joint research topics with UPC’s CERH2 institute.

Representatives from Catalonia Trade & Investment presented the region’s 2030 Hydrogen Roadmap, which targets 12 GW of installed electrolyser capacity and 100–150 public refuelling stations, backed by the €16.3 billion PERTE ERHA investment programme. Speakers detailed Catalonia’s three hydrogen hubs — Tarragona (industrial demand), Barcelona (port and mobility, including the SympH2ony project with Toyota and Messer), and Lleida (an aviation hydrogen “living lab” anchored at Lleida-Alguaire Airport) — and flagged the KSSP (Korea-Spain Strategic Program) as the most promising near-term channel for joint funding. Panel discussions with UPC researchers and Jeju National University counterparts surfaced shared priorities: reducing hydrogen production costs, building legal frameworks for hydrogen aviation, and expanding testing and demonstration infrastructure.

Reinforcing the Korea–EU partnership

On the sidelines of the forum, Vice Governor Lee met with Mr. Patrick Polacsek of the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Korea, alongside Mr. Pablo Gándara and Ms. Yookyung Oh from IURC Asia & Australasia. Mr. Polacsek highlighted Korea’s new status as an Associate Member of Horizon Europe Pillar II, the new EU–Korea High-Level Energy Dialogue agreed to be established at the June 2026 EU-Korea summit, and the €3.9 million EU–Korea Green Partnership project.

Vice Governor Lee described Jeju’s renewable energy curtailment challenges and its plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2035 with green hydrogen expansion, noting that Jeju hopes the IURC network can help identify solutions to the efficiency and cost barriers it has encountered in pioneering green hydrogen deployment at scale. Mr. Gándara also invited Jeju to explore a new partnership with Bremen, Germany within IURC network, on offshore wind training, citing strong thematic overlap between the two regions. Furthermore, Mr. Gándara invited Jeju to attend upcoming IURC CoP 3 study visit in Catalonia aligned with European Hydrogen Week to further reinforce academic partnership between Jeju and Catalonia and expands partnership to industrial cooperation.

Pre-Hackathon: Defining hydrogen’s shared demand-growth challenges

The centrepiece of Day 2 was the EU-IURC International Cooperation Special Session: Pre-Hackathon for Hydrogen Regional Collaboration, co-organised by Île-de-France and Jeju and opened by Jeju’s Ambassador for International Relations, Mr. Park Chong-suk.

Ms. Selena Jihyun Lee of the World Bank Group presented on “Scaling demand for hydrogen and the role of global collaboration,” drawing on the World Bank’s US$4 billion+ hydrogen and clean energy portfolio and its Hydrogen for Development (H4D) 10-GW Lighthouse Initiative. Dr. Sang-Jae Kim followed with “Creating a Green Hydrogen Lifecycle Ecosystem,” positioning Jeju as a living testbed built on four pillars — production, infrastructure, utilisation, and institutional support — and proposing a Hydrogen Demand Creation Lab to formalise CoP 3 cooperation.

Around 40 participants from public authorities, academia, and industry — including KHIMOD, TEAL Mobility, UPC, Paris Sciences & Letters University, Jeju National University, the New Zealand Embassy, Catalonia Delegation to Korea, and the European Union Delegation to Korea — then took part in a structured “Triple Helix” workshop, first in sector-specific groups and then in mixed breakout tables, to identify the challenges limiting hydrogen demand growth the most. After a facilitated plenary discussion, three priority challenges were agreed to carry forward to Phase 2 of the Hackathon in Paris:

• Levelized Cost of Green Hydrogen (LCOH) — the persistent price gap with fossil fuels, driven by OpEx (electricty) and infrastructure CapEx
• Standardisation & regulation — fragmented technical standards and the need for end-to-end regulatory frameworks to enable deployment at scale
• Long-term policy stability — the need for durable national policy to de-risk investment and incentivise hydrogen uptake over fossil alternatives

Social acceptance, workforce capacity, and input diversification were also raised as important cross-cutting themes.

On-site visit to the 3.3 MW Green Hydrogen Production Facility

Day 3 took the delegation into the field, beginning at Jeju’s 3.3 MW Green Hydrogen Production and Storage Demonstration Facility, delivered by Jeju Energy Corporation at a cost of approximately KRW 22.2 billion (USD 14.68 million). Powered by electricity from the adjacent Haengwon wind farm, the site runs two 1 MW alkaline electrolysers alongside 1 MW and 0.3 MW PEM units, producing up to 1,000 kg of hydrogen per day. The facility manager walked delegates through the full production chain — from deionised water supply and electrolysis through to compression and tube-trailer loading — and fielded detailed questions on operating costs, efficiency comparison between production methods, and Korea’s regulatory sandbox process for certifying imported equipment against combined US, Japanese, and EU safety standards to meet Korea’s national safety standard. The visit illustrated Jeju’s broader energy challenge: with renewables now supplying 24.3% of the island’s electricity and curtailment events increasingly common, hydrogen is emerging as a central tool for storing and utilising surplus renewable power to meet Jeju’s target of reaching over 7 GW of renewable capacity by 2035.

Hamdeok Green Hydrogen Refuelling Station

A short transfer brought the delegation to the Hamdeok Green Hydrogen Refuelling Station — South Korea’s first commercial refuelling station supplied by water electrolysis-based green hydrogen. Operational since August 2023, the station receives roughly 250 kg of hydrogen daily from the nearby production facility, compresses it from 200 to 870 bar, and dispenses it to vehicles at 700 bar, refuelling a bus in around ten minutes. With around 44,000 hydrogen vehicles on Korean roads and roughly 270 refuelling stations nationwide, delegates noted how Hamdeok’s model — anchoring demand through public bus fleets — offers a template for scaling early, predictable demand elsewhere in the network.

IURC Wrap-up Session: From ideas to cooperation pathways

The on-site programme concluded with an IURC Wrap-up Session at Jeju National University’s Industry-Academic Cooperation Building, chaired by IURC Country Coordinator Ms. Yookyung Oh. She recapped CoP 3’s progress since January 2026, including its Virtual Colloquia series, a joint research workshop that engaged over 90 researchers, and new MoUs between Jeju National University and UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), and between Osaka Prefecture and Catalonia Region. Building on the momentum of the visit, delegates agreed on four concrete cooperation pathways:

1. Joint research funding — JNU and UPC will pursue a joint research project call, with UPC leading proposal development given its prior experience
2. Airport decarbonisation & e-SAF — a new cooperation strand on airport e-SAF adoption, championed by Catalonia’s Aeroports de Catalunya and Christchurch, and driven by the shared urgency of meeting ReFuelEU Aviation’s 2030 targets
3. Co-design hydrogen network — connecting industry, academia, and public authorities to share use cases across regions, an idea originally proposed by Christchurch and reinforced by Catalonia and Île-de-France
4. A joint publication — a report distilling policy recommendations from the second phase of global hackathon planned to be held in 2027 Hyvolution Paris. This proposal is recently awarded by the IURC Competitive Fund

Participants also previewed the next stops on the CoP 3 calendar: a study visit to Osaka on 5–8 October alongside the Global Startup Expo, and a visit to Catalonia on 29–30 October coinciding with European Hydrogen Week. The meeting was concluded with emphasising importance of making ideas into more tangible projects and cooperation forms. Therefore all representatives reaffirmed their commitment to IURC programme and building further partnership together in future.

Jeju Hallim Offshore Wind Farm closes the visit

The programme concluded on 17 September with a tour of the Jeju Hallim Offshore Wind Farm, Korea’s largest offshore wind installation at 100.08 MW, built entirely with domestic capital and technology. Its 18 turbines generate enough electricity annually to power roughly 23% of Jeju’s population. Facility operators credited a resident benefit-sharing scheme with turning early local resistance into strong public support — a point of particular interest to the visiting delegation, who described public acceptance as one of significant barriers to offshore wind development, and left keen to learn more about how Jeju structured engagement between public authorities, developers, and residents.

Looking ahead

The Jeju study visit marked the first in-person milestone for IURC CoP 3 and the opening chapter of the Global Hydrogen Hackathon — moving the community of practice from shared ambition toward a concrete, jointly agreed set of priority challenges. With cooperation pathways now taking shape on research, airports, networking, and policy, CoP 3 regions will carry these findings forward through Osaka, Catalonia, and ultimately to Hyvolution Paris in January 2027, where the second phase of the Hackathon will turn these shared challenges into practical, actionable solutions.