President von der Leyen opens the European Hydrogen Week | EU Commission Press

Today, President Ursula von der Leyen opened the European Hydrogen Week. Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans will deliver a speech this afternoon, Commissioner Breton will intervene on Tuesday and Commissioners Kadri Simson and Adina Vălean will deliver keynote speeches on Wednesday. President von der Leyen said in her opening speech: “Clean hydrogen will have a central place in the climate-neutral economy of the future and I am proud of Europe’s role as the world’s clean hydrogen trailblazer. At the beginning of this year, more than 200 new hydrogen projects have been announced globally. 55% of them are in Europe… We have to scale up clean hydrogen production, expand its applications, and create a virtuous circle where demand and supply feed each other and bring the prices down. That is the principle. This is without any doubt a global endeavour, but I want Europe to be leading the race.” This year’s European Hydrogen Week will mark the public launch of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership – as the successor of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU). Together with the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, the Clean Hydrogen Partnership will be a key instrument for implementing the EU Hydrogen Strategy and for achieving the European Green Deal‘s ambitious goals. Funded under Horizon Europe with €1 billion that will be matched by the industry and academia, the new partnership will support research and innovation actions to produce, store, distribute and use hydrogen and accelerate the development and deployment of clean hydrogen technologies for the whole economy, in particular for hard to decarbonise sectors, such as heavy industries and heavy-duty transport applications. Building on the objectives of the EU Hydrogen Strategy, the event will discuss the opportunities associated with the production and use of hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels in the different sectors of the economy and how hydrogen will play a key role in the European Green Deal. On Tuesday, the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance will present an ambitious pipeline of viable investment projects for the large-scale deployment of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen. On Wednesday, the focus will be on how the EU is planning to reach at least 6 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers by 2024, with the objective to scale up to 40 GW by 2030 and how to implement the ambitious plans on Alternative Fuels Infrastructure. President’s speech is available online. Find more information here and follow it livestreamed.