(Montel) The European Commission has started work on boosting the EU’s clean hydrogen market with a call for an IT provider to develop a pilot platform to help match buyers and suppliers, it said on Monday.
The EC said it aimed to help the EU scale up its clean hydrogen market by collecting and processing data for demand and supply of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen, as well as connecting European buyers with local and international suppliers.
It plans to sign up the IT provider by the end of the year so the platform can be operational by mid-2025.
“Improving demand visibility between suppliers and consumers will help accelerate final investment decisions in Europe and contribute to securing off-take agreements,” said the EC.
Some “pertinent non-commercially sensitive insights” would be made public to improve market transparency, it said.
The legal basis for the platform is set out in the EU’s latest rules on decarbonised gases and hydrogen markets. The EC already has a legal definition of renewable hydrogen and it plans to propose one for low-carbon hydrogen – made from nuclear power, for example – by the end of the year.
State of play
The EC said there were currently 254 renewable hydrogen projects in the EU, of which 170 were in operation and 84 were under construction. Together they total almost 3 GW of capacity.
Another 8 GW was expected to come online after the renewable hydrogen projects selected to receive EUR 720m from last year’s European Hydrogen Bank pilot auction were up and running. These projects must start producing before 2030 as a condition of receiving funds.
But there were “still too few projects moving towards final investment decisions and too few off-takers signing contracts to switch to hydrogen”, said EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson.
The EC plans a second European Hydrogen Bank auction by the end of the year. The funding comes from selling EU ETS allowances.
The EU wants to encourage renewable hydrogen production and use it as part of efforts to cut emissions and reduce dependence on imported natural gas, particularly from Russia. It aims to produce 10m tonnes and import 10m tonnes by 2030.
