The mainland Government will launch a new notice for support for the production of hydrogen and renewable gases, no launch date unspecified, with the allocation of 70 million euros, under the REPowerEU, the Ministry of the Environment said today.
REPowerEU is a European Commission proposal to end dependence on Russian fossil fuels before 2030 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The office of Minister Duarte Cordeiro also highlighted the support for the investment of 185 million euros of the Recovery and Resilience Programme, dedicated to supporting the production of hydrogen and renewable gases, for 25 new projects totalling an investment of 229 million euros during phase one.
The second phase – with an allocation of 83 million euros and whose applications ended on Monday – had a total of 49 applications, of which 39 concern green hydrogen projects, nine biomethane projects and one project provides for the production of the two renewable gases.
In the revision of the Energy and Climate Plan 2030 (PNEC 2030), Portugal presented a renewed ambition in energy and climate policy until 2030, namely in the field of renewable hydrogen, leading to the revision of the National Hydrogen Strategy, to more than double the expected capacity of electrolyzers by 2030, from 2.5 Gigawatts (GW) to 5.5 GW.
The Government intends to launch by the end of the year the auction of centralised purchase of biomethane and renewable hydrogen, for injection into the national gas auction network, having ended the public consultation period on Monday.
The idea is to bid for 150 Gigawatt-hours per year (GWh/year) of biomethane and 120 GWh/year of renewable hydrogen, which corresponds to about 0.4% of the annual consumption of natural gas in Portugal.
The contracting period will be 10 years and the maximum bid prices are 62 euros per Megawatt-hour (MWh) for biomethane and 127 euros per MWh for renewable hydrogen.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
