Hydrogen, Italy will need investments of 18 billion by 2030

Approximately EUR 18 billion of cumulative investment will be needed to enable hydrogen technologies and production facilities between now and 2030, thus guaranteeing the country 2.27 million tonnes of domestic production according to the most 'ambitious' scenario that gives this vector a very important role.

These are the first estimates of the investment potential contained in the draft of the National Hydrogen Strategy, which Il Sole 24 Ore is able to anticipate and whose drafting was entrusted by the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, to an ad hoc table set up in February.

The document which, in the intentions of the owner of Mase, was to be finalised by the autumn, is still the subject of discussion between technicians and operators, and ministry sources, questioned by this newspaper, say that action will have to be taken on some points to give greater impetus to some objectives deemed too cautious. But, in the meantime, the draft contains an initial series of indications as to the weight that hydrogen will play, starting with consumption.

On this front, again in the most advanced scenario, the government estimates about 25 billion euro of cumulative investments in modernisation, replacement and installation of new technologies, components and plants, which will be deployed in the various sectors of use. In industry, more than 3 billion investments are expected to be activated, of which almost 90 per cent in the steel sector. And here we come to the chapter on energy users, to which the draft devotes ample space with a very precise analysis of the potential and limits of the various sectors with respect to a greater push on this vector.

In the highest scenario of those examined (the other two, wait-and-see and intermediate, assume a longer delay in the maturation of hydrogen and, in the second case, a situation fairly equidistant between the former), the final hydrogen consumption in industry would be about 0.72 million tonnes (equivalent to 2.07 Mtoe, million tonnes of oil equivalent), or about 39% of the current total consumption of hard-to-abate industries. But the penetration, the draft strategy makes clear, would be very different. Because in some sectors, such as steel, the bar would be set very high (86 per cent), while cement and ceramics would have lower percentages, around 20 per cent. And this by virtue of the possible contribution to decarbonisation that could be made to these sectors by other useful options, such as electricity, CCS (carbon capture and storage), biomethane, bioenergy and waste in cogeneration.