Last May, German Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger brought RWE and Shell to Australia to discuss hydrogen with bankers, investors, and politicians.
Corporate Europe Observatory’s latest analysis illustrates how privileged access, revolving doors, and large PR spending have shaped Germany’s perspective on this heated topic.
Germany shapes EU policy. Take last week’s difficult negotiations to phase out combustion engine autos by 2035. Germany declined to agree until a loophole was proposed, allowing e-fuel-powered vehicles to be sold after 2035.
The eFuel Alliance, which includes Porsche and 170 other petrol guzzlers, wants “for eFuels to obtain political acceptability and legislative clearance as a key contributor to sustainable climate protection.” The German e-fuel loophole met their expectations.
Hydrogen and CO2 e-fuels are quite inefficient. They don’t help the environment with 16% energy efficiency compared to 72% in electric vehicles. The Porsche, ExxonMobil, and Siemens-led Haru Oni project in Chile produces hydrogen-based e-fuel for Germany.
Porsche foolishly asserts that “classic and modern sports cars may be part of the answer to cut emissions” despite scientific warnings regarding green hydrogen initiatives in the region.
Approximately 100 German companies—many of them in fossil fuel and other polluting industries—are essential players in the green hydrogen value chain. They are using hydrogen as a “clean” approach to lock in combustion engines, pipelines, power plants, and airports because decarbonisation is an existential threat.
Hydrogen lets them delay climate action and protect polluting assets. EU and German leaders see hydrogen as a panacea. Germany is expected to import 70% of future EU/UK hydrogen. The REPowerEU plan set 2030 green hydrogen ambitions at 20 million tonnes, half local and half imported.
Green hydrogen production was 0.04 million tonnes in 2021. Hydrogen hype masks reality. First, 99% of global hydrogen production is “grey” hydrogen from fossil fuels, with annual CO2 emissions exceeding Germany’s.
“Blue” hydrogen, marketed as “low-carbon,” has a huge climate imprint. Carbon capture and storage, a faulty, risky, expensive, and failing technofix, produces it from fossil gas.
Despite proof that blue hydrogen was created to save dirty petrol firms, fossil industry Marketing promotes it as a step towards green hydrogen. The hydrogen lobby won big when Germany adopted blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is explicitly mentioned in the leaked hydrogen strategy.
Habeck and key government officials met with gas lobbyists daily in his first seven months. BDEW members sell 90% of fossil gas in Germany.
Green hydrogen economies are chimaeras. Green hydrogen, made from renewable energy, is energy inefficient, a potent indirect greenhouse gas, and takes enormous amounts of land, water, and renewable energy to produce. Germany has hydrogen alliances with 26 potential export countries, many of them in the Global South.
Hydrogen colonialism leads to human rights abuses: a mapping of 27 predominantly African countries found no hydrogen project with community consultation. In Saudi Arabia’s proposed megacity Neom, where ThyssenKrupp will erect a massive electrolyser to manufacture hydrogen for export, ancient tribes have been violently evicted and some dissidents have been executed.
The IPCC warned of a “last chance for climate action” lately. Nevertheless, the EU—led by Germany—is obstructing progress.
The loophole in the combustion engine ban, the petrol and hydrogen package, the revised Renewable Energy Directive, the Hydrogen Bank, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, the Net-Zero Industry Act, and the Critical Raw Materials Act will boost the hydrogen bubble and corporate profits at the expense of global justice, energy democracy, and climate action.
Hydrogen hoax did not fool climate and social justice movements. At last week’s European Gas Conference in Vienna, hundreds of protestors, led by African campaigners, opposed the EU and Germany’s hydrogen colonialism and its environmental risks.
Decision-makers must ignore the industries that triggered the climate and energy problems. Over 100,000 individuals have asked the European Parliament to ban fossil-fuel lobbyists, but their views are being ignored.
