ARTICLE Regulation is essential to scale-up the hydrogen sector Deciding which areas require policymakers’ attention is the next critical step. Hydrogen passed its first great hurdle when its absolute necessity Together, these initiatives place hydrogen at the center of key in humanity’s effort to decarbonize was widely accepted. European energy security, industrial and climate policies. Adoption in July 2020 of the European Commission’s Hydrogen Creating enabling frameworks of rules and standards is Strategy for a Climate-Neutral Europe was a symbolic marker of hydrogen’s next big hurdle. that major achievement. Despite the progress achieved with the legislative proposals forming the Fit-for-55 package, we still have REGULATORY PRIORITIES a very, very long way to go, and not a lot of time. We need to Neither the ambitious objectives set for Europe nor similar regulate fast, at EU and at National level, to create a platform to hydrogen policies recently established by many member states achieve the strategy. and elsewhere in the world will be reachable without regulation. Phase I of the EU strategy called for 6 GW of hydrogen That too is relatively widely understood, but from there, the electrolyzers in the EU by 2024, producing up to 1 million consensus begins to fracture. For example, some sectors are tonnes of renewable hydrogen. That, the EC declares, will “start better suited to adopt hydrogen earlier than others, and could be in priority with decarbonizing existing hydrogen production.” targeted for fast-track rules, but we’ve yet to agree which parts of Phase II, from 2025 to 2030, is even more ambitious. Hydrogen the hydrogen value chain demand urgent regulatory attention. will become “an intrinsic part of an integrated energy system”. Renewable electrolyzers capacity within the EU will rise to 40 The need can be divided into four areas: GW, producing up to 10 million tonnes of renewable H.2 • Production of renewable hydrogen The Commission’s concurrent formation of the European Clean • Its use in industry (to replace gyydrogen and later in newre h Hydrogen Alliance showed the parallel recognition that Europe uses) requires an industrial policy, and that it should include European • Its use in transportation, and investment and leadership in hydrogen’s industrial value chain. • Storage and distribution through a transformed gas grid. Since 2020, the 40GW/10 Mt target set by the EU Hydrogen Strategy has been augmented with an additional 10 Mt of Choosing where to regulate first is an important next step for imported renewable Hydrogen, quantities seen as necessary policymakers. Low-hanging fruit is the generation of renewable in the context of RePowerEU, Europe’s action plan to reduce hydrogen to replace “grey”, particularly in refineries and dependence on Russian fossil fuels presented in May 2022. ammonia plants. The next sensible step is to replace fossil fuels 44