Spain, Lithuania and Austria will participate in the ‘Auctions-as-a-Service’ scheme as part of the second European Hydrogen Bank auction, which will be launched on December 3, 2024. In addition to the €1.2 billion in EU funding from the Innovation Fund, the three countries will deploy over €700 million in national funds to support renewable hydrogen production projects located in their countries. The total funding mobilised by the auction will therefore be around €2 billion

Spain is allocating between €280 and €400 million for the scheme, using funds from its Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), the European Commission revealed, adding that the total support available will depend on the amount of funds used in the country’s existing State aid scheme for hydrogen clusters and valleys, which is also funded from RRP resources. The exact amount of support is expected to be confirmed by spring 2025

Lithuania is dedicating around €36 million for the scheme, from their Modernisation Fund budget. The Commission said that the participation will help the country reach its national target of 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of electrolysis capacity and 129 kilotonnes of renewable hydrogen production annually by 2030

Austria is committing €400 million from its national budget to the scheme. As disclosed, hydrogen producers will be eligible for a maximum grant of €200 million per project, with a maximum capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) of production to be supported in this auction

“The mobilisation of this additional funding under a single European auction platform is an efficient system that increases opportunities and reduces costs for industry. In effect, participating companies in these countries are making one bid for two different sources of funding. The scheme enables Member States to finance additional projects in their country, even after the Innovation Fund’s budget has been fully allocated,” the Commission pointed out, encouraging other Member States to also take part in the scheme in the future

Today, at a stakeholder workshop on the European Hydrogen Bank organised by the European Commission’s DG CLIMA, it was announced that the budget for the second auction later this year would amount to €1.2 billion. This represents 25% of the Innovation Fund’s 2024 budget, with the remainder going to batteries (€1bn) and conventional grants (€2.6bn) which also support innovative hydrogen projects

Beyond the funding level, the design of the auction needs to continue evolving to increase its impact and to allow more projects to reach a final investment decision:

• Keeping a 5-year period for commissioning is key;

• Becoming more flexible on aid cumulation is crucial to speed up the decarbonisation of the economy;
• Ensuring European funding support to the European technology value chain is essential. Introducing resilience criteria to preserve a key role for technologies and components made in Europe would help ensure the competitiveness of the European value chain

Hydrogen Europe will continue to work with the European Commission and industry stakeholders to shape a Hydrogen Bank that can effectively and ambitiously support the scale up of the sector, which is needed to reach our binding 2030 targets and carbon neutrality by 2050