With the Climate and Transition Fund, a new partnership brings butter to the fish.
The new coalition just unveiled its intentions for the next four years. The climate paragraph, which oozes enormous ambition from start to finish, stood out head and shoulders. The fact that the coalition offers butter with the fish with the Climate and Transition Fund of 35 billion euros demonstrates its seriousness. This fund will be used to build the necessary energy infrastructure, implement green industrial policies, and improve the sustainability of mobility and the built environment.
The Climate and Transition Fund’s greatest reserve is set aside for supporting technologies that can provide high-quality renewable energy carriers. These technologies may be able to disburse a total of 15 billion euros in subsidies until 2030.
It’s unclear exactly what this entails, although green hydrogen and e-fuels will almost probably be included. E-fuels are fuels created from green hydrogen that have had carbon collected added to them. E-kerosene, e-methanol, and e-diesel are examples of fuels that may be burnt in an internal combustion engine. Blue hydrogen, in addition to green hydrogen and e-fuels, is likely to be included in the program. The CO2 is extracted from blue hydrogen, which is standard gray hydrogen.
Although the electrolysis method for producing green hydrogen has shown to be effective, it is still not widely available in reality. The cost of scaling up is prohibitively high, and the business case cannot be fulfilled at this time. As a result, initiatives have a hard time getting off the ground. Private parties can still initiate initiatives to further develop and scale up the technology if the new cabinet subsidizes the unprofitable top.
The government believes that the unprofitable top will cost 5 billion euros under the Dutch hydrogen ambitions, as stated last year in the hydrogen government vision. This unprofitable top is well covered, with just a portion of the 15 billion euros set aside for the development of technology for the generation of high-quality renewable energy carriers.
Seven EU nations have developed a hydrogen plan, which they want to fund using public funds allocated specifically to hydrogen initiatives. A better understanding of the plans’ soundness is achieved by dividing the available money by the expected electrolysis production capacity. With the new coalition’s ambitions, the Netherlands will sweep to the top of the hydrogen Champions League in one smooth swoop.
