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The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has found the European Union’s program to develop a renewable hydrogen program needs a reality check due to use of “overly ambitious” benchmarks and numerous other issues.
Hydrogen can be used to make electricity without producing carbon dioxide when expended. It can also be used in the steel production process, replacing coal. The gas is therefore of considerable interest as the world transitions away from fossil fuels.
The element is usually isolated using electrolysis – passing an electric current through water – which separates hydrogen and oxygen. But if the electricity used to conduct electrolysis is not sourced from renewables, hydrogen is obviously not carbon neutral.
Figuring out how to obtain “green” hydrogen at scale is thus the focus of many scientific and industrial minds. In 2020 the European Union created a Hydrogen strategy, updated it two years later, and made the element part of its plan to achieve its 2050 zero CO2 target,
The ECA conducted and audit of the progress of that plan, and on Tuesday published its findings.
The news wasn’t great as the audit found numerous problems. Among them:
A lack of robust analyses before setting production and import targets, which were not realistic and therefore likely won’t be achieved;
No target price for hydrogen was set;
EU member states have their own targets and plans, which don’t always align with the bloc’s ambitions;
Development of production capacity has been slow, because investors are uncertain of demand, which in turn makes would-be users of hydrogen wary.
Other issues included bureaucratic intrigue, which saw the European Commission (EC) fail to follow up a report authored by the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance – a body it had established. People who attended Alliance roundtables emerged uncertain about what they were required to do, resulting in “general slowdown in activity.”
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Just how many electrolyzers will be needed to achieve Europe’s hydrogen dreams is also unknown, and hard to calculate.
The audit considered the cost of hydrogen storage and pipelines, noting Germany alone has assessed its costs at €19.8 billion (£17 billion, $22 billion). The audit suggests other projects and nations have set unrealistically low budgets.
The ECA concluded it’s time for a “reality check.” For one thing, four years have elapsed since the publication of the Hydrogen strategy, and improvements to technology mean previous assumptions may no longer be accurate.
The court therefore suggested a set of recommendations to be completed between mid-2025 and mid-2026, which boil down to the EU updating its targets to be “ambitious but realistic,” establishing a roadmap that member states are required to follow, and monitoring members’ plans and progress.
Implementing these changes will be up to the EC and individual member states of the EU. Although there are substantial structural issues at play, the audit did note that the original plan actually had “good first results” – which may indicate that the whole project for green hydrogen isn’t doomed. ®
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