Hydrogen, on the NRP projects at a standstill

One premise is a must: the road to full hydrogen take-off in Italy is not downhill. So much so that the government, with the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, is trying to put together all the pieces of the complex mosaic of the development of this vector. With the aim of making its cost competitive, which suffers enormous differences in the different variants of hydrogen (from the 'grey', produced from fossil fuels, to the 'blue', which combines the former with carbon capture and storage, to the 'green', generated by drawing on renewables).It is no coincidence that the last piece put on the track, the National Hydrogen Strategy, presented in recent days by the head of Mase and in which three diffusion scenarios are outlined according to the greater or lesser penetration of the vector, aims to implement measures to facilitate the realisation of the first hydrogen production projects envisaged by the NRP and which must be operational by 2026.

A very tight deadline, on which the operators - see also another article on this page - have been sounding the alarm for some time, concerned that the time available is too short to give a concrete follow-up to projects as complex as the whole hydrogen game. Which, in the NRP, can count, as is known, on 2.9 billion in funding distributed among six investment lines (hydrogen valleys, use of hydrogen in hard-to-abate sectors, electrolysers, research and development, and experimentation with hydrogen for rail and road transport), the bulk of which (over 2.2 billion in funds) is in the hands of the Ministry of the Environment. Where it is the Pnrr mission unit headed by Fabrizio Penna that is following the timetable very closely and committed to declining the maze of objectives and intermediate stages of the four Mase interventions.

An articulated trajectory, therefore, which, if one looks at the progress of the individual measures, does not currently record any particular delays. However, the grounding of projects is yet to come, while the part of preparing the regulatory framework that should lead to the implementation phase is proceeding without any particular hiccups. This is the case, for example, for the measure dedicated to the construction of electrolysers, where resources are divided into three streams (one of which is aimed at supporting the implementation of Ipcei, the important projects of common European interest) and where, among several steps, an initial selection of projects has been made that will have to guarantee a hydrogen value chain.

With respect to the hard-to-abate chapter, which includes a billion resources - to replace at least 10% of the methane and fossil fuels used in the production processes of these sectors -, the amount granted so far is just over 10.1 million after the signing of the agreement, upstream of the pathway, with the owners of the projects selected to promote the transition from methane to green hydrogen. This is not an easy step, so much so that Mase has made ad hoc support available to the implementing parties, also to ensure proper preparation of the administrative-legal activities connected with the investment.

Another not so easy game is that of hydrogen production in disused industrial areas (the so-called hydrogen valleys), where the RepowerEu assistance has made it possible to add to the projects financed to date (48), a further 9 for a total of 57 proposals aimed at producing renewable hydrogen in disused industrial areas, which should make it possible to reach the two targets for the measure (at least 10 production projects with an average capacity of 1-5 megawatts each for the first and 2 additional projects for the second), both to be completed by 30 June 2026. While, on the research and development front, by that date Italy must have carried out at least ten projects, one for each of the four strands envisaged (from the production of green and clean hydrogen to innovative technologies for storing and transporting this vector). And here, according to Mase, the concession provisions have already been adopted in favour of the holders of the projects deemed eligible, and implementation activities are at an early stage.