In a letter dated 10 September, the French Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, called on the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, to defend the place of nuclear energy in hydrogen production.
The Minister is concerned about the EU’s approach of favouring renewable hydrogen, produced with electricity from renewable sources, over low-carbon hydrogen, produced in particular from nuclear power stations.
The letter, revealed by Euractiv, stresses in particular that the principle of additionality - a criterion aimed at avoiding cannibalisation of renewable electricity for the production of renewable hydrogen - “does not apply well to countries with an electricity mix that is already largely decarbonised, where the supply of electricity from the grid must be treated on an equal footing with direct supplies through contracts with renewable sources”.
Mrs Pannier-Runacher therefore calls on the Commission to provide, in its draft delegated act on renewable hydrogen (see EUROPE 12959/22), a derogation for “countries whose energy mix has a carbon content of less than 80gCO2/MWh”.
She also criticises the criterion that electricity used for renewable hydrogen production cannot be produced with public financial support and the approach of counting only renewable hydrogen towards the renewable energy targets.
On this last point, Mrs Pannier-Runacher proposes to give Member States the possibility to exclude low-carbon energies such as nuclear from the calculation of the denominators of the renewable energy targets.
The Minister also asks the Commission to ensure that the EU requirements also apply to imported hydrogen.
See the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/35s (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)