The total announced project capacity within the European hydrogen electrolyser market would take the green hydrogen sector to 2.7GW by 2025 – a nearly 50-fold increase on capacity built over the last ten years.
This is according to research conducted by Delta-EE’s new Global Hydrogen Intelligence Service, created to provide insights on how the new global clean hydrogen sector is developing.
The study indicates that over the past decade, project activity around clean hydrogen has been growing quickly, with 67 operational projects including electrolysers, offering a total capacity of 56MW, developed across 13 different countries. These projects produce an estimated 4,700 tonnes of green hydrogen per year, with approximately half of this consumed by the transport industry and approximately one third used for decarbonising industrial applications, such as petrochemical refining.
Dr Robert Bloom, product manager at Delta-EE: “There are two sides to this story. On the one hand, this is incredibly rapid growth of a key technology for net-zero targets; on the other, it’s still well short of the tremendously ambitious national and EU targets that have been set.
“We should remember though, that this is an embryonic market. The current project pipeline is driven almost entirely by EU or national funding with project stakeholders targeting use-sectors where state aid is strongest. With the huge amounts of capital made available through various national hydrogen strategies, the EU green deal and IPCEI Hydrogen, we expect to see many more projects added to the pipeline.”
The study found that currently nearly half of all European electrolyser capacity is in Germany, while no other country has more than 10MW installed. However, the sector is expanding fast; the first major projects in several countries (e.g. Spain, Netherlands, Denmark) will be at the 10s of MW scale in 2021/22 and will soar towards the 100s MW by 2025. A key factor in this growth will be the increase in manufacturing capacity of electrolyser manufacturers.
“We were already looking at hydrogen through various lenses,” explains Jon Slowe, director at Delta-EE. “For example, our heat research service looked at the potential of hybrid hydrogen/heat pump residential heating systems, and our electric vehicle charging research delves into decarbonising applications such as buses. As hydrogen establishes itself as a key part of decarbonisation efforts worldwide, it makes sense to centralise and formalise that expertise into its own service, providing the full-value chain insight that our clients know us for.”
