The chairman of the Iberdrola group, Ignacio Galán, has participated together with the Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, in the Green Hydrogen Summit held in Brussels to discuss the necessary policies to accelerate the adoption of renewable hydrogen in Europe and allow the application of the plan REPowerEU of the European Commission, with the aim of reducing dependence on fossil imports.
The meeting, organized by the Renewable Hydrogen Coalition (RHC), brought together representatives of the main companies in the sector, heads of the European Union and hundreds of interest groups to address the contribution of green hydrogen to decarbonisation and energy independence . The European Commission estimates that an acceleration of green hydrogen and its derivatives would reduce the EU’s dependence on natural gas from Russia
by approximately 27 bcm (27 billion cubic meters).
The chairman of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galán, and chairman of the RHC since last September, has congratulated the European Commission “for its strong leadership in REPowerEU” which should be accompanied by “stable and favorable policies that stimulate supply and demand and promote investments”. Galán has assured that «renewable hydrogen is a solution for today and for the future. It can significantly replace imported fossil fuels and the polluting hydrogen made from them”, In this sense, he stressed that “the members of the Renewable Hydrogen Coalition are helping to meet the EU’s climate and energy ambition, making our continent is cleaner and stronger thanks to the H2 of its own production with European technologies«.
For her part, the Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, stressed that “we have to diversify and move away from Russian fossil fuels. This means accelerating the ecological transition. Renewable hydrogen plays a crucial role in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify industry and transport. We need it for the planet, for our independence and for security of energy supply. With RepowerEU, we plan to roll out this solution faster, taking our EU Green Deal ambitions to the next level and giving us the tools to make it a reality.”
From the Renewable Hydrogen Coalition they have established a series of criteria aimed at the political rulers for the materialization of the objectives established at the summit.
Among the measures, the need to adopt a definition of renewable hydrogen, which reflects the reality of the projects, stands out; streamline the granting of permits for the implementation of renewable hydrogen facilities, guarantee access to financing to achieve the projects and adopt the objectives in a binding manner to send a message to the market.
The current moment is crucial for the RHC, which emphasizes the need to act now to reach the European objective of multiplying by 2,000 the current production of green hydrogen.
