Recently, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager gave an interview to Danish press on the topic of hydrogen. Many of her statements were inaccurate and contradictory and could potentially cause significant damage to the European hydrogen sector. Hydrogen Europe CEO Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, in order to clarify and tackle these issues, sent a letter to the Commissioner for Competition.

➡ “Hydrogen is expensive to transport.”

Over a distance of 1000km 1 GWh of renewable energy in form of green hydrogen is significantly cheaper to transport than 1 GWh of electricity.

➡ “Ammonia is not easy to transport, it is unlikely that green ammonia will be shipped from US to Europe. (…) If you want to be on the EU market the risk of moving production to the US is not very high.”

Today, bulk tankers transport ammonia at low cost. Until pure hydrogen pipelines are up and running, ammonia and methanol are the cheapest way to transport green hydrogen.

➡ “You lose a lot of calories by converting solar and wind into hydrogen and then into ammonia.”

This is true, but is also the case for many industrial processes. Even the efficiency of converting sunlight into electricity via PV panels into electricity is less than 25%. Also, the current production method for grey ammonia is very energy intensive and is producing a lot of carbon emissions. So why not use green hydrogen, even with a low (but bigger than zero!) efficiency, to save carbon emissions. It’s a question of system efficiency.

➡ “I will not allow member states to match US support for production of green hydrogen and liquid sustainable fuels.”

This directly contradicts many of the state aid measures adopted recently by the European Commission and intimidates possible investors, discrediting support for hydrogen.

➡ “Hydrogen is not part of the scheme”, referring to the recently announced Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF) scheme. On the contrary, hydrogen production is included in that scheme with regards to the production of electrolysers.

We are available to provide any information needed to clarify the above-mentioned interpretation, in order to avoid misconceptions with with the potential to have a damaging effect for a clean tech that features prominently in the FitFor55 Strategy echoed in the ongoing legislation, and which represents an excellent and cost-effective tool to assist the rapid transition to a zero emission society.