Germany’s hydrogen settlement changed – And Finland fell off the board

Germany’s most famous research and engineering house, the Fraunhover Institute modeled in his new study in October, how hydrogen flows would flow in Europe in 2030 and 2050. There were several scenarios in the modeling, but Finland was not really given any role in the modeling as an export country for Europe’s emission-free hydrogen economy.

Trade magazine told about the modeling results on Tuesday and its conclusions confused many readers – and for good reason. After all, Finland has also been spoken of by the Germans as a significant hydrogen economy country.

Different system, different results

The readers’ confusion was increased by the fact that almost the same group of researchers, Ph.D Tobias Fleiter published in August of last year as the first author A hydrogen study commissioned by the EU Commissionwhich modeled how much green hydrogen European industry would need in 2050.

In this report, Dr. Fleiter separately pointed out that Finland can become one of Europe’s largest exporters of hydrogen. In addition to Finland, the research group saw the largest green hydrogen production capacities in France, Spain, Great Britain and Norway.

A good year passed and Finland was no longer mentioned as an important hydrogen exporting country, but others were mentioned. What has happened regarding that?

At least the fact that the research modeling was now done with a different system. In the newer study, European hydrogen flows have been estimated using the Enertile system, and in the older one, the estimates have been made using the Metis system.

In practical systems modeling, the number of hydrogen projects in Finland has collapsed compared to before. A year ago, for example, it was estimated that 19,000 megawatts of electrolyzer capacity would be in use here in 2050. In the new modeling, the estimate varies between 1,000 and 10,000 megawatts, depending on how much hydrogen is generally used in Europe.

Offshore wind power would only be a fraction

What about Finland’s electricity production capacity? In the new modelling, the amount of offshore wind power would remain at 2,200 megawatts in 2050. In the older modelling, the project list of both EK and the Finnish renewable association is used, where almost 70,000 megawatts of offshore wind power would be built.

So it seems that Germany has now begun to more realistically evaluate the situation of the EU member states in terms of the construction of renewable electricity production and the development of the hydrogen economy, and that’s good.

The problem is still that the German scenarios are missing an important piece of the puzzle in the widespread electrification of society. Even in Berlin, it would be time to recognize nuclear power again as one part of the European energy palette.

The author is the editor-in-chief of Kauppalehti.