Energo: Lofty EU hydrogen goals unlikely to be met

The EU has placed a lot of faith in green hydrogen as a means to decarbonise its economy, but there is a doubt about whether Brussels’ ambitious goals can be delivered on.

Green hydrogen is produced from water via electrolysis, powered by renewables, and is viewed as the lowest-carbon option for tapping hydrogen as an energy source. In its REPowerEU plan released in 2022 as a strategy for eliminating Russian energy imports and accelerating decarbonisation efforts, the European Commission set a goal of producing 10mn tonnes per year of green hydrogen by 2030, while importing an additional 10mn tpy.

This was double the targets set two years earlier in the EU hydrogen strategy.

Production capacity for green hydrogen in Europe last year was a mere 31,600 tonnes, according to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy. This was supplemented by 44,100 tonnes of blue hydrogen, produced from natural gas via methane reforming, using carbon capture and storage (CCS) to sequester the resulting emissions.