Following the Fit for 55 policies and targets proposed by the European Commission and the recently renewed ambitions of the REPowerEU communication, Hydrogen Europe has prepared a position paper titled "Delivering REPowerEU through a strong European hydrogen industry" (click here to read it [1]).

One of REPowerEU's main pillars is the Hydrogen Accelerator, sets out a strategy to double the previous EU renewable hydrogen target to 10 million tons of annual domestic production, plus an additional 10 million tons of annual hydrogen imports. Meeting these targets requires the EU to significantly upscale its manufacturing capacities for innovative equipment such as electrolysers. Infrastructure will also need to be quickly developed and retrofitted for allowing the transportation, distribution, and storage of hydrogen, both domestically produced and imported from countries with great renewable energy resources. New investments in any gas import terminals and pipeline should be future-proved, hydrogen ready. 

A summary of our key recommendations:

• Increase the renewable energy target to at least 45% by 2030.
• Keep the ambition of the 50% RFNBOs binding target in industry by 2030.
• Ensure the 2.6% RFNBOs target in the transport sector is maintained and consider an increase of up to 5%.
• Introduce intermediary targets in 2027 for both targets in industry and transport and corrective measures should the target not be on truck.
• Maintain the current ambition of the AFIR - Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation proposal in Member States. 
• Increase the 2030 sub-target for synthetic aviation fuel (e.g., e-kerosene) from the currently proposed 0.7%, in line with a 5% target before 2035.
• Keep temporal correlation to a monthly resolution in the Delegated Act on RFNBOs.
• Ensure a grandfathering clause on additionality for hydrogen projects commissioned before 2027 in the Delegated Act on RFNBOs.
• Consider as additional those existing renewable energy power plants that are already out of support scheme and are approaching a decommissioning decision. 
• Define low carbon hydrogen by 2023, with high-level principles already agreed in the Hydrogen and decarbonised gas package.
• Consider introducing thresholds in the Industrial Emissions Directive to treat the various hydrogen production sites different depending on their sizes.