Industry welcomes German government plans to accelerate hydrogen rollout

The German government has agreed on a draft law to accelerate the lagging expansion of hydrogen infrastructure. “Licensing procedures are too slow and too bureaucratic. With the hydrogen acceleration law, we will simplify them from the ground up, make procedures digital, and create more speed,” said economy minister Katherina Reiche. Crucially, the construction of electrolysers for hydrogen production, transport pipelines, and other infrastructure will be classified to be “of overwhelming public interest,” which will ease permitting.

The law covers onshore and offshore electrolysers, import terminals for hydrogen and its derivatives, storage facilities, and pipelines. “For decarbonising the shipping and aviation sectors, installations for producing synthetic fuels will also be covered,” the ministry added. Moreover, the ministry wants to facilitate the extraction of naturally occurring hydrogen deposits, sometimes referred to as "white hydrogen".

Utility association BDEW called the draft law “an important step” to get Germany closer to its climate targets and strengthen its economy in the long term. Companies would have an “adequate” legal framework to work with, said BDEW head Kerstin Andreae.

However, the lobby group said further legal changes are needed to allow faster infrastructure construction, for example in the building code and public procurement law. “This is the only way to make procedures significantly faster in practice and to safeguard investments,” Andreae said. However, cuts to hydrogen expansion in the government’s 2026 budget send the wrong signal and must be corrected to give companies investment security, she added.

Achim Dercks, head of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), agreed that companies were getting the right signals from the government. The equal treatment of "green" hydrogen made with renewables and other types of "low carbon" hydrogen would help companies accelerate their planning, Dercks said. “However, it is incomprehensible why this is limited to only part of the installations,” he said, adding that industry facilities set to use green hydrogen were not included in the package.

Scaling up a hydrogen industry is seen as a prerequisite for the country’s plan to be climate neutral by 2045. Germany will not be able to cover its expected hydrogen demand with domestic production, meaning the bulk will have to be imported, even if there are doubts about the economic viability of many shipping-based projects. The slow roll-out of hydrogen infrastructure is a major weakness of Germany's energy transition, according to a recent government monitoring report.