Hello and welcome to the Strawman. When it comes to the climate, we got you covered like an SPF50 sunscreen.

Today we’re looking at some of the latest findings that show how far the EU is from hitting climate goals. Hint - it’s not a pretty picture. Two days in a row and we’re still talking about the EU’s gas issues - clearly there’s a lot to digest…

Slow, steady, and highly regulated

One of the ideas that the EU has leaned heavily on as part of its climate transition is that Hydrogen will play a critical role in reducing reliance on natural gas. But this week, at the World Hydrogen Summit, energy executives argued that the EU’s Hydrogen projections are waaay off.

At the current rates, a best case scenario takes the EU 50% of the way to hitting their Hydrogen goals - to produce 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and to import and additional 10 million tonnes to reduce gas emissions by 55%. The maths ain’t adding up.

Given the major role that hydrogen is supposed to play in the energy transition, this puts a number of broader targets in jeopardy. The EU’s preparing for its finals, and right now, they’re failing their practise tests.

As a recap, yesterday we spoke about Germany’s requests to its fellow G7 members to issue a statement in favour of increasing public investment in gas. They argue that the same infrastructure will eventually be used in Hydrogen based power plants but clearly there’s a number of issues that need to be resolved

License to Gas

Renewable hydrogen works by splitting hydrogen molecules from oxygen molecules in water through electrolysis - all of this is powered by renewable energy sources. It’s still in its early days and will require a large amount of money to optimise and scale.

Executives at the conference are confident of the role hydrogen can play but they’re worried that regulatory uncertainty as well as a lack of clarity on incentives is stalling existing projects and preventing more funding from coming in. The EU regulator is like that substitute teacher who tries to show off by implementing all the rules. Not cool. 

Executives are calling for more urgency as well as a clearer process for permits and licensing, one of the most common issues. The Netherlands is one of the leaders in the space but as things stand, only one of 25 proposed projects in the country have actually begun.

The EU is notorious for its slow moving pace. In fact, the EU took two years to agree on a definition of green hydrogen because of technical disagreements. That’s the definition of bureaucracy if you ask me.

Time will tell if ringing the alarm like this has any impact but one thing is clear: a huge part of the industry is betting on the role hydrogen will play in a cleaner future and in order to realise this we’ve all got to move a lot faster.

Until next time,

The Strawman