In a joint ministerial letter obtained by EUROPE, nine European Union member states (France, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic) called, on Wednesday 1 February, on the European Commission to quickly propose an amendment to the draft revision of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) to include low-carbon hydrogen, which is produced using electricity from nuclear power plants, among other things.
They justify their request by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to meet the EU’s climate commitments by 2030 and 2050.
They argue that exclusively renewable targets would delay the development of a European hydrogen economy, leaving the potential for low-carbon hydrogen production untapped.
They therefore call for “equal incentives for renewable and low-carbon hydrogen” to be able to “fully deploy available low-emission hydrogen production and consumption, without any delay or unnecessary constraint”.
The signatory ministers also claim that a strategy based mainly on renewable hydrogen would lead to higher hydrogen production costs to the detriment of the competitiveness of European industry and could lead to new energy dependencies by increasing imports of renewable hydrogen from foreign producers.
These Member States - with the exception of the Czech Republic, which held the EU Council Presidency at the time - had already written to the Commission on this issue in October (see EUROPE 13051/6).
The letter comes at a time when the Renewable Energy Directive is under review. The co-legislators will meet again on 7 February for a fourth round of interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’) on this dossier. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)