The European Commission has recently published the new draft conditions for the second European Hydrogen Bank (EHB) auction call expected to open at the end of 2024. Possible changes include a lower ceiling price, faster entry in operation, as well as a dedicated budget basket for projects with maritime offtakes. You can read about all proposed changes in this article.

The instrument supports green hydrogen production within the EU. A fixed premium (€/kg of produced hydrogen) is offered for a period of 10 years. Your project must have a minimum 5MW(e) of newly installed water electrolyser capacity in a single location in an EEA country planned to entry into operation within the next 3 years (draft condition).

The main difference of this scheme compared to other grant calls is the importance of defining the right bid price, the main criterion of evaluation. The bid price is not necessarily the funding gap of your project. Defining a successful bid price requires a complex decision-making process which involves insights from the market and estimations of the potential competitors that could apply in the same round.

EGEN (part of PNO Group) can provide you such insights via the EHB Intelligence report which is updated for each call. The strategic insights will enable you to take assumption-based decisions for your bidding strategies required for a successful application. It will help you define a bid price that is not only low enough to be successful, but also as high as your project's boundaries allow, so you can take the most out of your participation in the auction.

For more info on the EHB Intelligence report visit EGEN’s webpage.