The UK and the EU both see hydrogen as essential to achieving net zero and both have extensive and well-funded policies to support it. Yet progress is far too slow.

Green hydrogen represents less than 1% of total production and still costs 6-14 times more than grey hydrogen. Only a tiny fraction of green or blue hydrogen projects have reached final investment decision.

In many proposed applications, hydrogen is being eclipsed by electrification. But in other areas, hydrogen and its derivatives still look like the best or possibly only option: fertilizer, shipping, jet aviation and long-duration grid balancing.

What’s more, regardless of the higher production costs of cleaner forms of hydrogen, its system benefits in terms of greater energy security and lower overall energy system costs still look potentially enormous.

It is therefore time to take stock. Both the UK and the EU need to ask what their policy is getting wrong and whether they could make faster progress, and at lower cost, by working together.

In 2024, HyDEX (Hydrogen Development and Knowledge Exchange) and ERA (Energy Research Accelerator) held a series of summits in Brussels and London where academics, policymakers and industrialists examined the issue of hydrogen collaboration between the UK and EU.

At this FREE event at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, ERA and HyDEX will be launching their ‘UK-EU Hydrogen Policy Report’ with a host of speakers from industry and the public sector, outlining the case for UK-EU collaboration, with specific recommendations to develop hydrogen infrastructure, markets and policy.