Delta-EE releases research on European hydrogen electrolyser market

The research is the first produced by Delta-EE’s new Global Hydrogen Intelligence Service, created to provide data, analysis, insights, and realism on how the new global clean hydrogen sector is developing.

In the last 10 years, the project activity around clean hydrogen has been growing quickly, with 67 operational projects including electrolysers, and targeting new energy applications developed across 13 different countries. These projects offer a total capacity of 56 MW, producing an estimated 4700 tpy of green hydrogen. Approximately half of this is consumed by the transport industry, and approximately one third is used for decarbonising industrial applications, such as petrochemical refining.

According to Delta-EE, Today nearly half of all European electrolyser capacity is in Germany, while no other country has more than 10 MW installed. However, the sector is expanding fast; the first major projects in several countries (e.g. Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark) will be at the 10s of megawatts scale in 2021/2022 and will soar towards the 100s megawatts by 2025. A key factor in this growth will be the increase in manufacturing capacity of electrolyser manufacturers. Today’s leading manufacturers such as Nel Hydrogen, ITM Power, Cummins, and McPhy, are all building factories capable of producing 100s of megawatts if not gigawatts of electrolysers a year. Dr. Robert Bloom, Product Manager, comments on the expanding electrolyser market: “There are two sides to this story. On the one hand, this is incredibly rapid growth of a key technology for net-zero targets; on the other, it’s still well short of the tremendously ambitious national and EU targets that have been set.

“We should remember though, that this is an embryonic market. The current project pipeline is driven almost entirely by EU or national funding with project stakeholders targeting use-sectors where state aid is strongest. With the huge amounts of capital made available through various national hydrogen strategies, the EU green deal and IPCEI Hydrogen, we expect to see many more projects added to the pipeline.”

The Global Hydrogen Intelligence Service covers hundreds of different project data types across production, storage, and end-use for hydrogen, including data on companies, assets and individual projects and estimating total production and utilisation of clean hydrogen. The service complements Delta-EE’s existing new energy expertise in areas such as the decarbonisation of heating and transport, flexibility, and business models.

“We were already looking at hydrogen through various lenses,” explains Jon Slowe, Director at Delta-EE “For example, our heat research service looked at the potential of hybrid hydrogen/heat pump residential heating systems, and our electric vehicle charging research delves into decarbonising applications such as buses. As hydrogen establishes itself as a key part of decarbonisation efforts worldwide, it makes sense to centralise and formalise that expertise into its own service, providing the full-value chain insight that our clients know us for.”

For more news and technical articles from the global renewable industry, read the latest issue of Energy Global magazine.

Energy Global's Spring 2021 issue

The Spring issue of Energy Global features a varied spectrum of in-depth technical articles detailing recent projects, future projections, and technological advancements in the renewables sector, from companies including GlobalData, Atlas Copco, Watlow, QED Naval, TRACTO, AB Energy, and more.

Don’t forget to sign up to receive future digital issues of Energy Global for free here.

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/other-renewables/09062021/delta-ee-releases-research-on-european-hydrogen-electrolyser-market/