The Northern German Living Lab (NRL) is an innovative joint project that aims to test new ways of achieving climate neutrality. To this end, production and living areas with particularly high energy consumption are being gradually defossilized and converted to renewable energy sources – especially in industry, but also in the heat supply and mobility sectors.

More than 50 partners from business, science and politics stand behind the Northern German Living Lab. They work closely together as an energy transition alliance: Together, the NRL partners want to create sustainable innovations, trigger economic impulses, and strengthen Northern Germany as an industrial location.

The model region of the Northern German Living Lab comprises the federal states of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well as the city of Bremerhaven. The project bundles different sector coupling projects in geographical “hubs” that are oriented to the network topology of the electricity and gas grids. Hydrogen production centres are created at high-performance nodes in order to gradually decarbonize local consumption hotspots.