European Commission approves up to €6.9 billion of State aid by seven Member States for the third Important Project of Common European Interest in the hydrogen value chain
The Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, a third Important Project of Common European Interest (‘IPCEI') to support hydrogen infrastructure. This IPCEI is expected to boost the supply of #renewable #hydrogen, thereby reducing dependency on natural gas and helping to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal and the #REPowerEU Plan.
The project, called “IPCEI Hy2Infra”, was jointly prepared and notified by seven Member States: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia.
The Member States will provide up to €6.9 billion in #public #funding, which is expected to unlock €5.4 billion in private investments. As part of this IPCEI, 32 companies with activities in one or more Member States, including small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs'), will participate in 33 projects.
IPCEI Hy2Infra will cover a wide part of the hydrogen value chain by supporting:
⭕ the deployment of 3.2 GW of large-scale #electrolysers to produce renewable hydrogen;
⭕ the deployment of new and repurposed hydrogen transmission and #distribution #pipelines of approximately 2,700 km;
⭕ the development of large-scale #hydrogen #storage #facilities with capacity of at least 370 GWh; and
⭕ the construction of handling terminals and related port infrastructure for liquid organic hydrogen carriers ('LOHC') to handle 6,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year.
Participants will also collaborate on interoperability and common standards to prevent barriers and facilitate future market integration. The IPCEI will support the gradual emergence of an EU-wide hydrogen infrastructure starting from different regional clusters.
Funding, beneficiaries and amounts
The IPCEI will involve 33 projects by 32 companies, including five SMEs. The participating companies will closely cooperate with each other through numerous collaborations, as well as with external partners, such as transmission system operators, potential offtakers, universities, research organisations, and equipment suppliers across Europe, including SMEs.
The figure below presents the workstreams of Hy2Infra, including the individual projects.
Several Member States (France, Germany, Poland and Portugal) included their participation in the IPCEI Hy2Infra in their Recovery and Resilience Plans and thus can partially fund some of their projects through the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
More information on the amount of aid to individual participants will be available in the public version of the Commission's decision, once the Commission has agreed with Member States and third parties on any confidential business secrets that need to be removed.
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