The future of the hydrogen economy in the northern border regions

Recap of the Hydrogen Cross Border Conference 2025

Thursday 13 March 2025 saw the first anniversary of the annual Dutch-German congress on hydrogen developments, especially in the mutual northern border regions, in Zuidbroek. The congress, which had been preceded by a large-scale dinner with the main key players in the evening before, took place under the title ‘Hydrogen Cross Border Conference: Best/bad practices, hands-on recommendations & learnings’ and was attended by more than 200 experts with roughly an equal distribution between the two countries.

Together with the initiative H2-Ostfriesland, the district of Aurich, MARIKO GmbH, the H2 region Emsland, FME, OLEC e.V. and Enterprise Europe Network, New Energy Coalition was responsible for organising the event and our expert Catrinus Jepma closed with a keynote lecture on hydrogen initiatives around industry in East Groningen.

Hydrogen value chain

The theme chosen this year was: how to close the entire value chains around hydrogen and what the biggest challenges (prove to be) in doing so. Of course, the theme fits well with the general feeling in the market that hydrogen development is quite laborious at the moment. This is firstly due to a lack of visibility on an early business case for green hydrogen. Complex and unnecessarily restrictive regulations are another delaying factor, in addition to uncertain and difficult to predict European and national policies. And then there are the all-important chicken-and-egg problems in that the whole value chain has to be built and must be right in all parts.

Nevertheless, judging from the many diverse regional and local actions and initiatives reported at the congress, the spirit in the mutual border regions does not seem substantially affected. It may be true that greening is somewhat less of a priority in (inter)national politics and applications of green hydrogen and hydrogen carriers in the large industrial clusters seem to stagnate, but the more small-scale investment initiatives in production, transport and storage and applications in cluster 6 companies, SMEs and mobility (especially ships and trucks) do show considerable dynamism in the regions mentioned. According to contributions from Enexis, Statskraft, EWE, Gasunie and FME, among others, the Northern Netherlands and Northwest Germany share the ambition to make use of offshore wind power and local onshore generation to produce and apply the green hydrogen in their own region as well, knowing that the storage possibilities are naturally there in the region and that the hydrogen transport system will be the first to be further rolled out from the North. It also potentially helps for hydrogen applications that the power grid is becoming increasingly problematic for customers and there are numerous subsidies to support local and regional initiatives at parts of the value chain. Moreover, it helps that locally and (inter)regionally the lines of communication in the North are often short.

The three officials who spoke, Wiebke Osigus(Lower Saxony Minister of Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development), Henk Emmens (Provincial Executive of Groningen Province) and Henk Jumelet (Provincial Executive of Drenthe Province), all stressed the importance of regional support for hydrogen initiatives and also the usefulness of cooperation across the North Dutch-German border: ‘Dann lernen wir von einander’.

The main deal breakers

What are the main game-breakers according to those present there? The still very high price for green hydrogen (>EUR10/kg), even when imported from ‘cheap’ countries (>EUR8/kg) does not help for applications in industry, but seems less problematic for mobility. The EU’s far-reaching additionality and correlation requirements to recognise green hydrogen is also an eyesore (get rid of it). Fuel cells require extremely pure hydrogen: will that work or back to internal combustion engines anyway (both)? Will transport and storage get off the ground sufficiently quickly (5 to 10 years should be possible)? Will there be more predictable subsidies for both demand and supply development (both) and do standalone local or regional hydrogen hubs have a future (is the question; linking to backbone more solid opportunities)? These were examples of questions that came along, illustrated by as many practical initiatives.

There was also a focus on: blue hydrogen as an affordable pathway to green, the need for aggregators to smooth hydrogen markets, and the need for more insight into public acceptance of hydrogen (image still reasonable, but may change).

Cross-border cooperation

And what about cooperation across borders? It was striking that the tone and type of initiatives between the two countries were quite united. Even though the Dutch and Germans could each speak in their own language in their speeches, they understood each other very well and the mood was high. As far as the development of the hydrogen economy is concerned, these regions will have no problem.