The EU has awarded €720 million to green hydrogen projects in the first European Hydrogen Bank (EHB) subsidy auction, aiming to bridge the gap between renewable hydrogen and fossil fuel equivalents.
Seven green hydrogen projects with total electrolysis capacity of 1.5GW have been awarded a total of €720m. Each successful applicant will receive between €8m and €245m, depending on the bid volume and winning bid per kg of hydrogen produced.
Three of the auction winners are located in Spain, with a further two in Portugal and one each in Finland and Norway. The two largest projects are industrial scale, sized to 500MW of electrolyser capacity, with the smallest project sized to 35MW.
In total, the winning projects can be expected to produce 1.58 million tonnes of green hydrogen over ten years for use in the production of steel, fertiliser and chemicals and to meet demand from the maritime transport sector.
The bloc did not award the full €800m originally allocated to the pilot auction, leaving around €80m unspent.
