At a meeting on April 26, 2013 hosted by the  EU Commission “Hydrogen in the economy – the strongest link in the neergy chain?-  EU director general Philip Lowe referred to the role of hydrogen in planning for a medium target in 2030 towards the EU ‘s 2050 emission reduction efforts. He specifically mentioned the role as large scale distribution of hydorgen through the gas grid . EHA attended the meeting with around 100 stakeholders in Brussels. The presentations are available at the EC website.

Siemens head of Hydrogen Solutions  Gaëlle Hotellier pointed to Siemens efforts in PEM electrolyser technology development as a robust and flexible technology. Siemens is collaborating with RWE and develoepd a 100kW electrolyser with 50 bar output . Peak power is 300KW and Niederaussen.  PEM electrolyser are important beyond their use in peak shaving of renewable energy and could become very interesting from a economic point of view in power management to manage Control Power (see www.regelleistung.net/ip/action/index?langauge=en). Siemens is seeing an opportunities Primary and Secondary Power control; whentheir is negative control power , or too much power in the network, a PEM electrolyser system can be lined up to. Siemens will have 1-10MW range Silyzer systems available in 2015 and up to 100 MW in 2018.
Oliver Weinmann managing director Innovation of Vattenfall indicated the challenges with peak renewable electricity production  and weaker business cases already today. Vattenfall faces management of use of plants on a daily basis. They aree working in the ChemCoast projects in which several companies like DOW, Arcelor Mittal, E.ON,  Shell and Linde are cooperating to test the use of hydrogen in renewable energy management.. The German governemtn has initaited a Power to Gas initiaitve with an ambition in 2022 of 1000 MW storage to address 3TW of storage needs.
Eric Prades, CEO of Air Liquide Hydrogen Energy, presented the costs of hydrogen at the pump; conventional production cost of € 3/kg leads to € 10 per kg at the pump (petrol € 1.7 /l equivalent) . German excess renewable energy is 23.00 GWh per year  which is 4.5%  of German electricty consumption with  which 500.000 T of H2 could be produced for 4.2 mln fuel cell vehiclees (10% of German car fleet. Micheal Brown Director of Delta Energy indicated that 60.000 fuel cells micro CHP have been sold. Market outlook points to 200.000 5-8 kW systems by 2020.