Making renewable hydrogen cost-competitive (Legal analysis)

In our recent publication "Making renewable hydrogen cost-competitive: Policy instruments for supporting green H₂" (Agora Energiewende and Guidehouse 2021), we have presented several policy instruments for supporting renewable hydrogen.

Whenever new instruments are suggested, questions arise as to their compatibility with national, European and international law. We therefore tasked specialist law firm Becker Büttner Held (BBH) with a brief legal evaluation of the policy instruments addressed in the main publication.

This accompanying report includes BBH’s evaluation of the following instruments:
•    Carbon Contracts for Difference
•    H₂ supply contracts
•    Support for H₂-fuelled combined heat and power plants
•    PtL quota for aviation
•    General H₂ quota
•    Labelling system for climate-friendly basic materials

Each legal evaluation is structured as follows:
(A.) Instrument description, (B.) Abstract, (C.) European Law, (D.) National law, (E.) Suggestions for design.

The evaluation identifies the most salient barriers to implementation as well as needs for further analysis.