Qair has gone ahead and inaugurated its first renewable hydrogen station in France at Béziers, hence placing a new refuelling point at the intersection of the A9 and A75 motorways. It’s no accident where this is.
Heavy vehicles require infrastructure where they genuinely move, not where policy papers say they should move. The station is in the Méridien business district and is designed to cater to regional and long-distance transport with an obvious emphasis on buses and heavy goods vehicles as well as coaches.
Qair’s first renewable hydrogen station in France can dispense up to 600kg of renewable hydrogen a day and is geared for high-use mobility as opposed to token passenger-car deployment. IMING serves as the prime contractor on the project. Béziers is the place where hydrogen is no longer in the study and demonstration phase but is fully integrated into everyday life’, said the CEO of Qair France, Guirec Dufour. He said the city would become a critical link in a structured regional ecosystem. The inauguration was attended by the representatives of Hyliko, Hysetco, Hyundai, Toyota, and Solaris as well as GCK Mobility, which underlines the reality that the local market is being developed around vehicles, stations and supply at the same time.
It is well to be noted that the Béziers Méditerranée agglomeration has ordered 13 Solaris hydrogen buses in order to meet the local demand. The vehicles will be operated on the BeeMov network, run by RATP Dev Béziers Méditerranée, and will enter service in the autumn of 2026 on a future high-service bus line.
The station and bus deployment were selected through a call for projects for territorial hydrogen ecosystems from ADEME and were awarded €1.7 million or $1.99 million for the station and €2.9 million or $3.39 million for the bus fleet, according to a recent EUR/USD rate of about 1.1705.
The Béziers station is also part of the Corridor H2 programme of Occitanie supported by the regional council and the European Union as well as the European Investment Bank. The wider aim is to generate a zero-emission transport axis at a European level, connecting production, distribution and heavy mobility. This is the right way to do it – hydrogen transport schemes only work if refuelling assets and fleet demand grow in tandem, not if stations are built and then sit awaiting vehicles that never arrive.
The supply will come from Hyd’Occ, which is the renewable hydrogen production project led by Qair and AREC Occitanie in Port-La Nouvelle. Its first 20 MW phase is due to come online this summer and produce as much as 2,700 tonnes of renewable hydrogen every year for stations throughout the region, including Béziers as well as Narbonne. A second phase will double capacity to 40 megawatts.
Qair is also preparing to open its hydrogen station in Narbonne, which, by the way, is another step in the transformation of the hydrogen corridor of Occitanie from a regional ambition to a real infrastructure.