EC approves Italy’s €450m scheme to support green hydrogen production in abandoned industrial areas
Country’s regions and provinces will hand out grants from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to specific projects, many of which have already been identified
A total of €450m ($490m) in direct grants are to be handed out to green hydrogen projects in Italy, after the European Commission (EC) gave the green light to the proposal.
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The funding from the €191.5bn post-pandemic National Recovery and Resilience Plan will provide up to €20m towards investment costs per project, which will be selected by the country’s 20 regions and autonomous provinces in competitive bidding processes.
“The purpose of the measure is to re-use abandoned industrial areas as experimental units for the production of hydrogen in local RES [renewable energy sources] plants, located in the same industrial complex or in neighbouring areas.”
The stated goal is to complete at least ten brownfield green hydrogen production projects with a total capacity of “at least 10-50MW”, with all the funding handed out by the end of 2025.
“This €450m scheme will allow Italy to accelerate the deployment of renewable hydrogen capacities, in line with the EU Hydrogen Strategy,” said Margrethe Vestager, EC executive vice-president in charge of competition policy.
“The measure will also help Italy reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels, in line with the REPowerEU Plan, while ensuring that any potential competition distortions are kept to the minimum.”
Most of the 20 Italian regions have already published a ranking of projects that have applied for the funding, creating a kind of preferred candidate status for particular companies’ plans.
And some regions have apparently awarded the cash already.
In Liguria, a region in Italy’s northwest that contains Genoa, €13.72m is set to go to an Enel project in the town of La Spezia, which will produce 134 tonnes of green hydrogen annually.
And in the region of Veneto, which includes Venice and Verona, the entire €17.3m budget is due to go to Sapio Group’s Hydrogen Valley Venezia project.