Second European Hydrogen Bank auction with €1.2 billion budget is officially open

The European Commission (EC) has officially opened the second auction under the European Hydrogen Bank, via the Innovation Fund (IF24), to allocate €1.2 billion from EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) revenues to support producers of hydrogen categorized as Renewable Fuel of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO) located in the European Economic Area (EEA).

The auction was launched on December 3, 2024, in the first week of the EC’s new mandate, and will end on February 20, 2025.

The budget for the second auction has been increased by €400 million compared to the first IF23 Auction, which awarded nearly €720 million to seven renewable hydrogen projects in Europe.

The new IF24 Auction will support projects for renewable hydrogen production regardless of the sector in which it will be consumed, with a dedicated budget of €1 billion. The remaining €200 million budget is dedicated to hydrogen production in projects with off-takers in the maritime sector.

In addition, the EC offers an ‘Auctions-as-a-service’ mechanism, which allows Member States to finance projects that had bid in the auction but were not selected for Innovation Fund support due to budgetary limitations. This enables Member States to use national funds to support projects on their territory without the need to run a separate auction at a national level.

Spain, Lithuania, and Austria have recently announced their participation in Auctions-as-a-Service this year, pledging up to €836 million in national funds to support renewable hydrogen production projects located in their countries.

To remind, the EC launched the first auction under the European Hydrogen Bank in November 2023. It received 132 bids from 17 European countries. 119 proposals were found to be eligible and admissible and were then ranked according to their bid price, and evaluated by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), and seven winning projects were revealed in April 2024.