Latest News
Germany Updates its National Hydrogen Strategy
7th August 2023
On 26th July 2023, the German government coalition presented an update of its National Hydrogen Strategy, initially adopted in 2020.
Hydrogen technologies are an important tool that Germany can use to significantly reduce carbon emissions, and the updated strategy aims to further scale up the hydrogen market in the country in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2045 and strengthen the security of energy supplies.
Based on the strategy, the hydrogen demand in Germany is expected to reach 95-130 Terawatt hour (TWh) by 2030. In order to meet this demand, the domestic electrolysers capacity target will need to reach 10 gigawatts, which is double the target initially envisaged in the 2020 strategy. Around 50-70% of the hydrogen will need to be imported from abroad through pipelines, mainly from Norway and Denmark.
The revamped strategy also clarifies that direct government subsidies on the production side will be limited to renewable hydrogen, but applications using low-carbon hydrogen, including blue hydrogen produced from fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, can now be supported during the ramp-up phase of the hydrogen market.
In parallel, Germany is also working on developing a Carbon Management Strategy, which will define guidelines for dealing with CCS and CCU and the possible fields in which these technologies can be used to support Germany’s ambitious climate goals.