The EU Commission on May 2 2018 revealed its budget till 2027: “to protect, empower and defend Europe”. Hydrogen is ticking all these boxes:

Protecting from harmful fossil fuel use,

Empowering regions that provide opportunities for clean hydrogen production linked to renewable power plants and

Defending Europe’s industrial market leadership in key hydrogen and fuel cell technology areas.

The big question is which pots will provide support for hydrogen and fuel cell deployment: is the budgetline “European Strategic Investments”  of 50 bln replacing the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), was 56 bln to date? This budget line includes however the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) of which the total budget remained almost the same, 26 compared to 25 bln.  The CEF Energy budget doubled from 4 to 8, however the CEF transport budget was severely cut  (14 instead of 22). “European Strategic Investments”  also hosts a new “InvestEU” pogramme of 14 bln.

Good old Research and Innovation’s Horizon programme, now called “Horizon Europe“, increased to 97 bln (was 80 bln), the highest EU research budget ever. The question here is if the FCH JU will be continued in the same format under Global Challenges where new so called ” missions” will steer Europe to excellence in key domains. EHA will be scrutenizing this budget in more details these weeks and flagging gaps and opportunities.

Photo: latest station on earth! Fuelling renewable produced hydrogen complementing station developer Stratos Fuel  car-sharing program using fuel cell electric vehicles that will fill up with hydrogen dispensed from the Ontario and Riverside stations. The car-sharing program was funded by the California Energy Commission. Open for businessss 24 hrs  at 1850 Holt Boulevard, Ontario, CA 91761