Green hydrogen infrastructure, legislation required to build on REPowerEU plan

• Europe has established a leading position throughout the green hydrogen value chain but now should increase financial investments to develop out infrastructure while committing green hydrogen targets to legislation.

That was the major takeaway from a panel discussion at today's Green Hydrogen Summit 2022, hosted by PV Technology publisher Solar Media, as sector stakeholders called for a common critical vision across the European Union (EU) as the bloc intends to reach 40GW of eco-friendly hydrogen electrolysers by 2030.

As a result of study as well as technology financial investments in hydrogen made by both the EU and at the nationwide level, the bloc is "now a globe leader when it comes to electrolyser innovations", Rosalinde van der Vlies, director of the European Commission's Clean Planet Directorate, claimed at the occasion in Lisbon, Portugal.

" Thanks to the financial investments we have been making currently, we are currently in pole position to be a world leader also across all the hydrogen value chain elements."

A proposal to quadruple the EU's green hydrogen targets by 2030 has been included in its REPowerEU approach, a draft of which is readied to be published tomorrow.

Focused on minimizing EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of this year, REPowerEU highlights the significance of decarbonising sector by increasing the button to electrification and also eco-friendly hydrogen.

" I think we are really united as a European Union to make sure that we wish to have affordable, secure and lasting power, that we want to minimize our dependency from Russian nonrenewable fuel sources as rapid as possible. As well as obviously, hydrogen will certainly play a major role in this REPowerEU action plan," van der Vlies said.

When the REPowerEU technique was announced in March, the European Commission said it will certainly additionally establish the governing framework to advertise a European market for hydrogen and sustain the growth of an integrated gas and also hydrogen infrastructure, hydrogen storage facilities as well as port infrastructure.

According to van der Vlies, it will certainly be essential to make certain that the governing framework will be fit to sustain the marketplace and also the various colours of hydrogen.

She claimed that as part of a hydrogen accelerator included in the REPowerEU approach, the commission will certainly be considering problems such as port infrastructure "in order to make sure that we can satisfy our passion of boosting the manufacturing in the EU locally, however additionally making sure that we will certainly import hydrogen inside European Union from abroad".

Given Europe's green hydrogen import ambitions, there should be a "rapid expansion" in the buildout of equipment that will be required to take care of those imports, stated James Watson, assistant general of gas industry group Eurogas.

He indicated present bottlenecks encountering electricity grids across Europe: "We generally need to make certain we are not going to fall under a comparable trouble with hydrogen since we require to construct not just the hydrogen itself ... we likewise need to construct the infrastructure, we require to start now."

While Eurogas delights in that REPowerEU includes a target of increasing EU hydrogen production and also imports to 20 million tonnes by 2030, such passions must be consisted of in a lawful framework, Watson said.

" The fact for us is that if you do not have those targets in legislation, they will not be attained. And also the fact is that EUPowerEU is a communication, it is a viewpoint, it is a collection of ideas," he said, including "we need to see the European Commission pushing those targets that they've discussed in RePowerEU right into the Renewable Energy Directive."