The European Commission, which on Thursday will open a first round of 800 million euros in aid to EU green hydrogen manufacturers, will launch a second round of 2.2 billion euros in the spring to bring the total value of such auctions to 3 billion euros.
“This week, we are taking the next step, launching the first auction of the European Hydrogen Bank. It is backed by €800 million of EU funds (…). In spring 2024, we will launch the second round of auctions for a total value of €3 billion,” announced European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen in a video address at the European Hydrogen Week in Brussels.
The system designed by the EU executive aims to compensate the difference between production costs and the market price for producers of clean hydrogen.
In the first tender, the Hydrogen Bank will cover the “green bonus” for the production of hydrogen from renewable electricity, which is the difference between the cost of producing renewable hydrogen and the price the market is willing to pay.
The auction will be won by the producers who need the least financial support per kilogram of hydrogen produced through this lever that seeks to launch an industry “in hatching”, in the words of Von der Leyen, who added in this business forum that in the last four years Brussels has authorised 17,000 million euros for some 80 green hydrogen projects in the twenty-seven EU member states.
It is one of the pillars of the Commission’s strategy to boost this energy vector, which has the potential to replace gas in various industrial applications and is also considered a solution for transport in ships and aircraft.
The EU hopes to produce 10 million tonnes by 2030, equivalent to 14 % of the EU bloc’s electricity consumption, and to import as much more.
For this reason, in parallel, the Commission is forging alliances with countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Latin American states, said Von der Leyen, who referred in particular to a 10 gigawatt clean hydrogen project in which the EU will invest 2 billion euros, with the aim that the product will arrive by ship to Croatia and be redistributed from there to southeast Europe.
Source: EuroEFE
