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Brussels’ efforts to establish hydrogen as a clean fuel have been criticised by the EU’s audit body in a damning report which says that, despite €18.8bn in funding, the bloc will not achieve its “unrealistic” targets.
The European Court of Auditors said the European Commission “did not undertake robust analyses” before setting production and import targets totalling 10mn tonnes of renewable hydrogen by 2030.
“The EU targets turned out to be overly ambitious: based on the available information from member states and industry, the EU is unlikely to meet them by 2030,” the report said.
Stef Blok, who wrote the report, told the Financial Times that hydrogen was vital to the EU’s ambitions to reach net zero emissions by 2050, but the targets were “not really founded upon the capacity at hand”.
Hydrogen is seen as key to decarbonising energy-intensive industries such as the steel and fertiliser sectors.
“Hundreds of thousands of people earn their livelihoods in these industries and a well-managed transition is of extreme importance,” Blok added.
Brussels has long been vocal in its support for the nascent green hydrogen industry, laying out a plan in 2020 to have at least 6GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers installed in the EU, and to produce around 1mn tonnes of green hydrogen per year by 2024.
The commission set more ambitious targets in 2022 as part of a strategy to wean the bloc off Russian fossil fuels after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
These stipulate that the hydrogen must come from renewable sources and exclude so-called low-carbon hydrogen, whose production is powered by either nuclear energy or gas with carbon capture.
But industry representatives have repeatedly said the targets were unattainable and that the sector needed more support.
In a letter to the commission this month, industry body Hydrogen Europe said: “Europe needs to move from the notional inclusion of hydrogen in the energy mix to an earnest development of the hydrogen economy.”
Consumption of renewable hydrogen in Europe in 2023 was just 0.11mn tonnes and Europe currently has only 324MW of green electrolysers, according to Hydrogen Europe — far below the commission’s target.
The ECA report found that total EU funding for hydrogen-related projects between 2021 and 2027 had reached €18.8bn.
But, of the 24 member states that had submitted plans for how they would decarbonise their economies to meet EU targets, only Germany had set a goal for importing hydrogen. None of the countries had set specific targets for hydrogen production in their national strategies.
The commission said it “notes the ECA’s critical assessment of the aspirational targets”, adding: “We now have to accelerate the deployment and uptake of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen in Europe and further develop this emerging market.”
The definition of low-carbon hydrogen the commission will use is due to be published this year. According to a draft seen by the FT, to be considered low-carbon the hydrogen must not be produced with more than 3.38kg of CO₂ per kg — a level that campaigners have argued is not ambitious enough for the EU to meet its climate goals.
Blok said because the renewable hydrogen targets for 2030 were “out of reach”, allowing low-carbon hydrogen to count towards the target was “a debate that should be taken seriously”.