On Wednesday 29.06.22, the EU Council approved its General Approach on the EU ETS revision proposal, a week after the Parliament voted on its position on the same file. The Council’s and Parliament’s positions provide a good basis to start trilogues with the European Commission later this year.

Hydrogen Europe welcomes the work of Member States and of the French Presidency on the General Approach, particularly the generally maintained ambition of the Commission’s proposal and the ETS on road transport and buildings emissions.

Hydrogen Europe also invites the Council to consider the higher ambitions set in the Parliament’s report, such as:

1) the cap reduction and wider sectoral coverage to maritime under ETS I,

2) the lowered threshold for the coverage of clean hydrogen production under ETS I.

Daniel Fraile, Chief Policy Officer at Hydrogen Europe, commented “For clean hydrogen to contribute to a cost-effective decarbonisation, policy makers in the trilogues should ensure the ETS covers a wide range of sectors. Renewable hydrogen and its derivatives, as well as other forms of low carbon hydrogen should be rightly incentivised in the ETS and CBAM. This will have to be tackled by the revision of ETS benchmarks by using a technology neutral approach. We will also need to ensure the CBAM covers the right products to avoid undesired distortions. We wish good luck to the Czech Presidency in doing its best to maintain the required high ambitions on these two files.”