Hydrogen’s innovation in the EU framework of Energy and Climate: hydrogen holds the potential for helping Europe to reach its targets of a climate neutral 2050. The development of new clean tech industries can help Europe to bounce back even faster, while boosting its competitiveness.
Europe is looking at a power system that will be based on more than 80% renewables by 2050. Hydrogen has the potential to reach 13-14% of Europe energy mix by 2050. Today it only reaches just about 2%.
Europe also looks to hydrogen for its use in industry and areas of transport where emissions are difficult to abate and where electrification cannot be guaranteed. Today’s demonstration projects in steel making are very promising and should be scaled up rapidly.
EU industry holds a strong global position in hydrogen, it simply does not have the infrastructure at scale yet to improve on its goals. Thus, Hydrogen strategy puts forward ambitious targets to install 6 GW of electrolyser capacity by 2024 and 40 GW by 2030 producing up to 10 MTn of renewable hydrogen.
Even if the costs have already been reduced by 60% in the last ten years, it is required investments which is the biggest barrier to innovation. EU decreased its public investment in research and innovation by 13% over the last years.
For this reason, the 672.5 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility will channel 37% of its grants and loans to climate-related investment. Also, Horizon Europe has a budget of 95.5 BEUR, 35% of these funds will be dedicated to the green transition.
2020 report on the State of the Energy Union https://bit.ly/3bfvptA
A Hydrogen Strategy for a climate-neutral Europe https://bit.ly/3y8fOWX