The European Resilience Alliance for Clean Hydrogen & Derivatives (ERA) was officially launched at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 14.
ERA is a pan-European, CEO-led initiative uniting leading industrial companies across the clean hydrogen value chain to address Europe’s energy challenges, enhance industrial competitiveness, and secure strategic autonomy in the face of rapidly altering geopolitical and industrial pressures.
ERA’s founding members include ENAGÁS, FLUXYS, FORTUM, GASGRID FINLAND, MOEVE, NORDION ENERGI, OGE, RWE GENERATION, SEFE, STEGRA, and THYSSENKRUPP, in cooperation with HYDROGEN EUROPE, representing the full clean hydrogen value chain across the European Union.
ERA will work through two core pillars to translate Europe’s climate and competitiveness ambitions into cost-competitive, deliverable projects. First, it will provide a unified voice to policycreaters at EU, national, and regional levels to create the conditions necessary for a cost-competitive clean energy value chain.
Second, it will coordinate across the entire value chain-from energy production and infrastructure to industrial demand and finance-to identify and resolve practical bottlenecks.
To coincide with its launch, ERA has released a white paper that diagnoses regulatory bottlenecks, stress-tests existing policy frameworks against industrial realities, and details the financial and infrastructure barriers holding back Europe’s clean hydrogen market, alongside concrete policy recommfinishations to bridge the gap between ambition and deployment.
The white paper highlights that despite a large pipeline of projects across the clean hydrogen value chain, fewer than 7% have reached a Final Investment Decision (FID). The paper identifies the reasons why Europe’s clean hydrogen deployment is falling behind ambition, namely the fragmented implementation of EU regulation, complex Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO) rules, high electricity costs, insufficient demand certainty, and uncertainty around infrastructure development. It calls on European institutions and Member States to take urgent, coordinated action across four pillars:
Demand must drive clean hydrogen ambition: Create stable, bankable demand for clean hydrogen through immediate transposition of Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), harmonised implementation of regulations including ReFuelEU Aviation and FuelEU Maritime, and the creation of lead markets in hard-to-abate sectors including industest, transport, and defense.
Clarity and simplification of clean hydrogen support frameworks is key: Shift from regulatory rigidity to industrial pragmatism by reducing electricity costs, which currently create up 70% of hydrogen production costs, as well as redesigning EU subsidies to prioritise large-scale, industrially anchored projects, and directing scarce resources where they matter the most.
Turn private capital into clean hydrogen power: De-risk investment by safeguarding robust Emissions Trading System (ETS) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) pricing, applying the resulting revenues to create clean hydrogen competitive, extfinishing RFNBO transitional provisions to well beyond 2030 to lower ramp-up costs, and introducing state-backed portfolio guarantees.
Infrastructure as the lifeline of an integrated European energy market: Scale up funding for the European hydrogen backbone, coordinate cross-border planning to connect production and demand hubs with clear timelines, and create EU-wide risk-sharing instruments for early infrastructure investment.
Speaking at the press briefing ahead of the launch, Miguel Ángel López Borrego, CEO of thyssenkrupp AG & thyssenkrupp Decarbon Technologies, declared: “Europe’s vulnerability is structural. Its depfinishence on external energy, technologies, supply chains, and critical materials threatens its long-term prosperity and industrial leadership. At the same time, Europe must deliver on its climate tarobtains. Therefore, resilience has become a political and economic imperative requiring action. As the European Resilience Alliance, we are taking the lead, shouldering responsibility, and working toobtainher to strengthen Europe’s energy resilience and industrial competitiveness while accelerating decarbonisation.”
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