The European Commission yesterday unveiled its long-awaited hydrogen strategy, outlining its vision to ramp up the EU’s renewable hydrogen capacity from 1GW today to 6GW by 2024 and 40GW by 2030. The Commission said its priority would be to develop green hydrogen, produced by electrolysers powered by renewable energy. However, in a move that sparked criticism from some green groups the Commission confirmed it would also support blue hydrogen, produced using fossil fuels at plants that could be linked to carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems in the short and medium term.
Hydrogen is widely seen as playing a key role in decarbonising hard-to-abate industrial sectors, such as chemicals and steelmaking, and heavy-duty transport, such as freight, buses, and shipping. Influential think tank BloombergNEF estimates that by mid-century clean hydrogen could met 24 per cent of world energy demand. However, policymakers and commentators have warned the cost of electrolyser technology must fall dramatically for the green hydrogen sector to deliver on its decarbonisation potential. As things currently stand, hydrogen makes up just one per cent of Europe’s total energy consumption and 96 per cent of hydrogen worldwide is made from fossil fuels.
But the EU Hydrogen Strategy published today argues the sector has the potential to rapidly expand, estimating that the installation of at least 6GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers in the next four years could produce up to one million tonnes of the clean fuel. By 2030, the Commission said the bloc could be producing up to 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen with some 40GW of electrolysers. Renewable hydrogen technologies will reach maturity between 2030 and 2050, the European Commission predicted, and could be deployed at ‘large scale across all hard-to-decarbonise sectors’. Cumulative investments for renewable hydrogen in Europe could be in the range of €180bn to €470bn, and between €3bn and €18bn for fossil-based hydrogen by mid-century, according to the plan.
In order to help identify which projects should receive funding, the EU launched a new Clean Hydrogen Alliance, a group that comprises industry, civil society, state and regional ministers, and the European Investment Bank. The Commission also confirmed it intends to develop a certification system for renewable hydrogen based on life-cycle carbon emissions in order to target support at the “cleanest available technologies”.
Source: BusinessGreen
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