The EU’s commitments to promote further hydrogen plants have so far been imprecise and general.
(Photo: Imago)
Dusseldorf The “European Clean Hydrogen Alliance” initiative lays the foundation for an accelerated hydrogen ramp-up in Europe. On Thursday, CEOs and representatives of the hydrogen industry met with high-ranking EU representatives, including Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, in Brussels.
In a joint declaration of intent, business and politics define how they want to overcome the hurdles in establishing significant European hydrogen production. The declaration is available to the Handelsblatt.
The focus of the initiative is a rapid build-up of electrolyser capacities. With the help of electricity from renewable energies, these systems can break down water into its basic components, oxygen and hydrogen, and thus produce climate-friendly energy carriers.
This technology is part of a plan called “Repower EU” that the EU Commission presented at the beginning of March to make Europe less dependent on Russian energy. It states that the EU wants to produce around ten million tons of green hydrogen itself by 2030. This could replace 25 to 50 billion cubic meters of Russian gas imports annually – that corresponds to 16 to 30 percent of the 155 billion cubic meters that the EU recently imported.
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But there is still a long way to go before these goals are reached. According to the declaration of intent, the EU would need electrolyser capacities of 90 to 100 gigawatts to achieve them. There are currently just 1.75 gigawatts. A sixty-fold increase is therefore necessary within a short period of time.
More and more companies are now focusing on the topic of hydrogen. The automotive supplier and technology group Bosch announced on Wednesday that it would invest half a billion euros in the development of components for hydrogen electrolysis over the next eight years.
The oil and gas group Wintershall and project partners want to invest one billion euros in a production facility in Wilhelmshaven that will produce hydrogen from Norwegian natural gas. The Thyssen-Krupp hydrogen subsidiary Nucera and hydrogen start-ups such as Sunfire and Enapter also attended the summit on Thursday.
disappointment in the industry
However, the manufacturers still see three major bottlenecks that stand in the way of a rapid build-up of European electrolyser capacities: The declaration of intent signed on Thursday states that the regulatory framework is incomplete. In addition, large investments are needed because future demand is still uncertain. And European value chains are needed to supply the necessary components and raw materials.
>> Be there: At the Handelsblatt Hydrogen Summit, we discuss how the market ramp-up can succeed
The EU’s commitments to address these issues have so far been imprecise and general. The declaration of intent states, for example, that the European Commission wants to ensure that the regulation for renewable hydrogen is appropriate. The production of electrolysers should be supported by the EU innovation fund, which should start in the second half of the year. The hydrogen alliance also wants to start an electrolyser partnership to network manufacturers and suppliers.
However, one industry representative was sobered by the vague results of the summit. The companies were hoping for reliable commitments to financial support for green hydrogen in the near future.
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