Hydrogen is a key planning parameter in the climate neutrality scenarios for Germany. However, with the currently projected costs of the new energy source, many of the applications assumed in the scenarios would not pay off. The corresponding theoretical financing gap in an average price development is 2-10 billion euros for the model year 2030 and 30-100 billion euros for the model year 2045, as the German Institute of Energy Economics (EWI) shows in a new projection. In the short study "The financing gap in the hydrogen market ramp-up: analysis of demand and price scenarios", a team from the EWI at the University of Cologne assesses the economic viability of the potential use of hydrogen as an energy source in 2030 and 2045. The study is based on a greenfield cost comparison of hydrogen applications and conventional processes in the industrial, transport, electricity and building sectors. The financing gap is calculated in the short study for a total of nine different price scenarios. The analysis shows that rising prices for fossil fuels andCO2 emissions increase the break-even price and thus reduce the financing gap. In the case of high fossil and low hydrogen prices, which is particularly advantageous for hydrogen applications, the scenarios considered in the short study still result in a financing gap of around 20 billion euros in 2045. In the opposite scenario with high hydrogen prices and cheap fossil competitor energy, however, the financing gap for 2045 grows to the order of 50-200 billion euros. "The biggest influence on the size of the financing gap we have calculated is the unknown future hydrogen price," says Klaas from the EWI.
