EU Court of Auditors warns that green hydrogen targets need reality check
The European Union’s plan to rapidly expand its green hydrogen market in a bid to become carbon neutral by 2050 is overly ambitious, according to the Court of Auditors. The bloc had set production and import targets totalling 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen by 2030.
The EU has made green hydrogen, made using renewable energy, at the core of its strategy to decarbonise the economy, especially energy-intensive industries such as the steel and fertiliser sectors. Despite 18.8 billion euros in funding, the bloc will not achieve its goal of creating a 20 billion tonne market by the end of the decade. The European Court of Auditors said the European Commission did not “undertake robust analyses” before setting these “unrealistic” targets.
Hydrogen is vital to the EU's goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. In 2020, the bloc adopted one of the world's first hydrogen strategies. In 2022, it set even more ambitious targets as it sought to replace gas from Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Updated strategy
However, these targets were more driven by political will rather than being based on robust analyses, says the Court of Auditors. "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,” it said in a report. It therefore calls for a reality check.
The auditors have advised the EU to update its hydrogen strategy based on a careful assessment of “market incentives for renewable and low-carbon hydrogen” as well as “scarce EU funding” and the “geopolitical implications of EU production compared to imports.” The EU will thus have to set up ambitious but more realistic targets.
“Our work is far from finished,” a spokesperson for the European Commission said in response. “We now have to accelerate the deployment and uptake of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen in Europe.”
An H2 engine © BELGA PHOTO DIRK WAEM
Related news
