The EPP group in the European Parliament presented, on Wednesday 10 March, last-minute alternative compromise amendments to the draft own-initiative report by Jens Geier (S&D, Germany) on the EU hydrogen strategy. Two days before, the Greens/EFA and The Left had presented their alternative compromise amendments, highlighting the strong division on this issue in the Parliament.
Compared to the compromise amendments proposed by Mr Geier (see EUROPE 12674/15), the EPP amendments put more emphasis on low-carbon hydrogen, which the group said would “play an important transitional role” in Europe’s energy transition.
For example, one of them stresses that “no specific technology of hydrogen production should be a priori singled out on the grounds other that their potential for emission reduction in the end use”.
For their part, the compromise amendments proposed by the Greens/EFA and The Left aim to remove any positive mention of low-carbon hydrogen from the report.
Noting that “both low-carbon and renewable hydrogen might develop in the European energy market”, they call for “focussing scarce European public money to investments in renewable hydrogen”.
In their view, only renewable hydrogen can indeed “make a sustainable contribution to achieving long-term climate neutrality and avoid lock-in effects and stranded assets”.
Scheduled for 18 March, the vote in the Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) is likely to be close on some compromise amendments, with the EPP, ECR and ID groups on one side and the S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and The Left groups on the other.
At the time of going to press, the document containing all the compromise amendments had yet to be fully finalised, as some groups had still not confirmed their support for certain amendments.
See the pre-final version of the compromise amendments: http://bit.ly/3cqMuRa (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)