EU reality check – waking up from hydrogen daydreams

Credit: Scottish Power

Hydrogen is no more the wonder gas than CO2 is the opposite. Apart from being very expensive to produce using so-called ‘green’ methods, it’s running into various obstacles elsewhere, such as absence of infrastructure.
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Europe’s time spent sleepwalking to the tune of hydrogen lobbyists – draining funds and political capital for far too long – appears to be coming to an end as leaders come face-to-face with physical realities, says The Brief @ Euractiv.

This week, I attended a business leadership conference hosted by the German Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. Attendees, all serious businesspeople, were asked which technology is the key net-zero technology. The number one answer? Hydrogen.

Europe’s fascination with hydrogen has become more like an addiction and a costly one, too.

The European Commission estimates that to produce, transport and consume 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen domestically, investment worth up to €471 billion will be necessary.

For the odourless gas to be climate-friendly, it must be produced through electrolysis using renewable electricity. To avoid electrolysers taking up all the green power in the grid and boosting demand for coal power, two-thirds of the €471 billion will have to be invested into additional renewables.

To meet the second half of the EU’s hydrogen targets – 10 million tonnes of imports – will require another estimated €500 billion.

That amounts to a €1 trillion dream to get the hydrogen economy from non-existent to infancy into 2030, and the spending certainly wouldn’t end there.

Hydrogen proponents may argue that not all that money will come from taxpayers and, indeed, private investments may end up shouldering much of it. But copious amounts of public funds are being invested right now.

“All relevant EU funds are being mobilised to support an accelerated scale-up of the hydrogen market in Europe,” the Commission stated in March.

That means shelling out €1 billion every seven years for the Clean Hydrogen Partnership.

The Innovation Fund, meanwhile, which taxpayers’ money spent on carbon prices from the EU’s emissions trading scheme is fed into, has put out multiple calls for hydrogen-related projects to the tune of €1.7 billion.

Then there are the projects deemed “important” to Europe, the so-called IPCEIs (Important Projects of Common European Interest), where EU countries can be more liberal with their financial support to individual sectors.

Hydrogen IPCEIs carry a €10.6 billion price tag. Another €5 billion comes from COVID-19 recovery funds. The European Investment Bank has also put €1 billion towards hydrogen projects.

Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen’s pet project and main production financing vehicle, the hydrogen bank, comes at a comparatively meagre €3 billion.

Can you tell Brussels is running out of money for hydrogen? [Talkshop comment – or just running out of money?]

Add national initiatives to the more than €20 billion from above, and you have an inkling of the size of Europe’s hydrogen daydreams, not to mention how far from achieving anything even close to the stated ambitions we remain.

Finally, what will all that hydrogen be used for?

Once, lobbyists painted a rosy picture of an entire economy running on hydrogen. But hydrogen cars proved a non-starter while heating with hydrogen has thankfully been banished from people’s minds.

Full article here.