Recent estimates indicate that EUR 25 billion in joint public and private money will be needed by 2030 in order for fuel cells and hydrogen (FCH) to reach full market breakthrough, Robert-Jan Smits, Director General of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation, has said.
Speaking at the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking’s (FCH JU) 7th Stakeholder Forum in Brussels in November, Smits noted that, in the current atmosphere of economic constraint, this amount might look very daunting. However, he added that there would be opportunities to tap into the EUR 300 billion investment package being proposed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to boost investment in the European Union.
The DG RTD General Director noted that a lot had already been achieved and that the FCH sector had seen a 16% increase in patents - ten times higher than the EU average, which is an indication of the level of innovation that is taking place. However, he noted that there is no room for complacency, and that now is the best time to capitalise on these achievements, as Energy Union is one of the key objectives of the new Junker administration.
The potential contribution of hydrogen to Energy Union was something touched upon by DG ENERGY Director General Dominique Ristori at the forum. Ristori said that Energy Union would develop in three directions - energy security, the completion of internal markets, and decarbonisation, with potential for hydrogen to contribute to all three directions. Ristori stressed that technologies would play a prominent role in this process, adding that, while Europe was solid when it came to fundamental research, it was less solid when it came to shifting from new knowledge to new markets and products. He said that, to improve this situation, it would be essential to establish a new operational bridge between national research organisations, European research and industry.
Both Smits and Ristori underlined the need for improved communications to increase public awareness of the benefits of FCH technology. Smits stressed that one of the biggest challenges would be to put hydrogen in the spotlight in a more positive way, as a clean and safe energy carrier that has the ability to transform lives. FCH JU Governing Board Chair Pierre-Etienne Franc also noted that societal change was required for hydrogen technologies to be accepted. He said that hydrogen technologies were ready to be accepted by society, but that it is not yet clear whether society is ready to adopt the technology. Franc stressed that this should be the Joint Undertaking’s focus in the period from 2015 to 2020. He said that the FCH sector was no longer an application-driven sector with niche products but had become a systemic issue and, as a result, it required a societal response and policy support.
With regard to the issue of policy to support the FCH sector, Marc Steen, Head of Unit at the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s in-house science service, said that the European policymaker was ultimately responsible for the interests of the European citizen. As a result, the focus of policymakers is primarily on public goods such as safety, security, environmental compliance, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and so on. However, he also noted that these policy objectives are not independent of technological developments, so the pre-normative research conducted by the JRC’s Institute for Energy and Transport in Petten was aimed at trying to achieve the ex-ante harmonisation of international standards that are performance based, so that they can contribute to smarter regulation.
Steen said that technological advances were periodically accounted for through the revision of European standards. However, he stressed that, for the deployment of fuel cells and hydrogen technologies, which are global in scope, there would be a need for international standards, and that European standardization organizations have agreements at various levels with international standardisation organizations with a view to elaborating these.
The Head of Unit noted that the JRC also conducts a certain amount of horizon scanning aimed at identifying the issues that the sector will be facing in the future, with respect to the need for supporting standards and enabling legislation. He said that the Commission had already started to compile the legislation that would need modification in order to enable the widespread deployment of FCH technologies.
Representatives from industry at the forum highlighted hydrogen’s potential contribution to the transformation of the energy sector in Europe. E-ON France CEO Luc Poyer said that power to gas would be a key technology for the transformation of the energy sector. The energy system needs flexibility in order to accommodate the intermittency resulting from increased levels of renewable energy. Flexibility in the electricity system has traditionally been provided by generation and Poyer noted that, while there is still a reserve of flexibility on the generation side, this was insufficient, so grid and demand side flexibility would also need to improve.
For this to happen, different types of storage will be required, including: power to power, power to gas and power to heat, Poyer said. The E-ON France CEO said that the most interesting of these options is power to gas - where electrolysers are used to convert power to hydrogen, which is then mixed into the gas grid in a proportion to be specified in regulations. He also touched on the possibility of counting green hydrogen as a second generation biofuel, which would allow the sector to contribute to the meeting of sustainable fuel targets. However, he said that this would require regulatory changes - specifically in the Fuel Quality Directive.
Many EU Member States have started hydrogen initiatives and Pierre-Etienne Franc noted that the FCH JU was trying to gather together these initiatives and to map out how FCH JU was going to drive the deployment of the system, which currently consists of around 50 stations and is estimated to reach 100 stations in 2018 and 250 stations in 2020. He said that this would not only be financed by the FCH JU, but that it would also be financed and supported by Member States and regions.
Representing one such region at the forum, London Deputy Mayor for Business and Enterprise Kit Malthouse noted that European industry needed to make a bet on hydrogen technology. He said that, from a political standpoint, the steps being taken by industry looked tentative and indicated that industry was willing to step in when others start to corner the market, rather than leading the charge. In a move that perhaps indicated that this was about to change, representatives from five major European bus manufacturers (Daimler Buses (EvoBus), MAN, Solaris, Van Hool and VDL Bus & Coach) signed a joint Letter of Understanding at the forum. This letter underlined their commitment to the commercialisation and market introduction of fuel cell electric buses in urban public transport. The letter was then presented to Olaf Scholz, First Mayor of the City of Hamburg, and to Malthouse, as representatives of two major European cities at the forefront of promoting low-emissions public transport systems.
Looking to the future, FCH JU Executive Director Bert De Colvenaer said that the JU’s ultimate aim was to continue making the technology cheaper and to increase the lifetime and the efficiency of the systems that are being built. He said that there is a need for large-scale demonstration of the fact that hydrogen can be used as a renewable energy integrator and as a storage medium. As Europe is unlikely to have the shale gas reserves of the US and does not benefit from the cheaper labour costs available in some parts of Asia, it was stressed at the forum that it therefore needs to rely on its trump cards, namely efficient energy markets and innovation - notably through hydrogen.
Background
The FCH JU was established in 2008 as a public-private partnership between the European Commission, European industry and research organisations to accelerate the development and deployment of fuel cell and hydrogen technologies. In May 2014, the European Council formally agreed to continue the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative under Horizon 2020.