Released today (May 30), the report, at the request of the European Commission under the InnovFin Advisory programme, bases its findings on the consultation by the EIB’s advisory services, with nearly 50 market participants.
The findings confirm that the international investment community recognises the market opportunity that hydrogen represents as a zero-emission fuel, but also the challenges it currently faces to scale its deployment.
Firstly, economic and regulatory conditions of hydrogen-based projects require improvement, to reduce risks and capital cost to mobilise the financing needed to meet the EU’s ambitious targets.
Secondly, the hydrogen sector being so interconnected, requires a more coherent value chain-based approach, which should allow various components for projects to develop in an ‘optimal’ way to support the broader hydrogen-based ecosystem.
In order to address these challenges, the report has highlighted solutions from the market consultation: Introduce new credit enhancement and risk-sharing mechanisms to facilitate bank financing; initiatives focused on ecosystem development and coordination of market participants; and advisory services to prepare projects for investment.
Jean-Christophe Laloux, Director General and Head of Operations at the EIB, said, “Hydrogen is among the technologies with the greatest potential to reduce global carbon emissions, especially in hard-to-abate industrial sectors. As the EU climate bank, we acknowledge both the potential of hydrogen and the many challenges in front of us.
“This new report provides important findings and recommendations for investors and policymakers to help them overcome some of the challenges and scale up financing for hydrogen projects.
“At the EIB, including through our Advisory Services, we will continue to work with our partners at the European Commission and project promoters to make hydrogen happen.”
The EIB report comes less than two weeks after the European Commission released its REPowerEU Plan, which promised €200m ($215m) for hydrogen research.
Read more: €200m for hydrogen research in REPowerEU Plan
Jean-Eric Paquet, Director General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission, commented, “This report carried out by the European Investment Bank in partnership with the European Commission represents an important step to take forward the European Union’s hydrogen agenda.
“It will better equip policymakers in their efforts to strengthen and expand a sector of such strategic importance for Europe’s decarbonisation, technological sovereignty and energy autonomy in the years to come.”
North American Hydrogen Summit
H2 View is taking its events platform to America’s original clean hydrogen hub of California. Together with the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CaFCP), we will stage our North American Hydrogen Summit in San Francisco on July 14-15.
As our summit theme Building Bridges: Hydrogen hubs and investment suggests, the event will explore the $8bn of funding announced to create at least four regional hydrogen hubs in the US. These hubs will turbo-charge the nation’s progress toward heavy trucking and industrial sectors that run without producing carbon pollution – and they may just provide the path forward to a hydrogen-fuelled future.
With California and Texas vying to be America’s hydrogen capital today, where are the hubs of tomorrow? Further still, what can other states, and countries, learn from California’s success story? And how can we build bridges to a successful flow of international investment?
If you are a member of the CaFCP, be sure to grab your ticket at a discounted rate with a code that can be provided to you by the events team.
Full information about this event including attendance and sponsorship packages can be found here.