Von der Leyen to continue prioritising green hydrogen in second five-year term following re-election

Newly re-elected European Commission president vows to launch Clean Industrial Deal in first 100 days

 

Ursula von der Leyen has been re-elected European Commission president, with her manifesto and today’s speech to the European Parliament vowing to continue many of her policies around the energy transition, including the deployment of clean hydrogen.

 

“We will stay the course on our new growth strategy and the goals we set for 2030 and 2050,” she said. “Our focus now will be on implementation and investment to make it happen on the ground.

 

“This is why I will put forward a new Clean Industrial Deal in the first 100 days. It will channel investment in infrastructure and industry, in particular for energy-intensive sectors. This will help create lead markets in everything from clean steel to clean tech and it will speed up planning, tendering, and permitting.”

 

Her manifesto further vowed to speed up and simplify the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) scheme, which unlocks vast amounts of state aid for large-scale facilities but has been criticised by many green hydrogen developers as extremely slow and complex.

 

Von der Leyen’s “political guidelines” also include the deployment of a hydrogen network of pipelines throughout Europe and the expansion of an existing aggregate demand mechanism for purchasing gas to also include the purchasing of H2 and critical minerals.

 

Similarly, von der Leyen plans to invest in African infrastructure, including for green hydrogen production, via the Global Gateway fund.

 

However, the re-elected European Commission president’s insistence that she will “stay the course” on 2030 and 2050 targets could raise eyebrows, given her previous administration had been criticised as setting unrealistic targets by the EU’s external auditors in a report published this week.

 

The Commission itself had strongly rejected the call in the report to revise its target for 20 million tonnes of H2 a year by 2030, arguing that this rollback would discourage investment in hydrogen infrastructure.

 

In her speech, von der Leyen also noted that the EU was already a leader in attracting investment in H2: “We attract more investments in clean hydrogen than the US and China combined.

 

“Finally, in the last years, we have concluded with global partners 35 new agreements on clean tech, hydrogen and critical raw materials. This is the European Green Deal in action.”

 

Von der Leyen, who hails from Germany's centre-right Christian Democratic Union party, won 401 votes in the 720-seat European parliament in the vote held today (Thursday).

 

Those endorsing her included the 53-member Green bloc, as well as three centrist groupings.