Spain has announced that it will allocate €490.5 million from its post-pandemic recovery funds to support renewable hydrogen and industrial heat decarbonisation projects through European auction programmes, Renewables Now reported.
The Ministry for the Ecological Transition said the decision was approved at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, which introduced changes to the rules governing direct grants for Spanish projects taking part in the European Hydrogen Bank and the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank’s Auctions-as-a-Service rounds. Both initiatives operate under the European Commission’s Innovation Fund.
Of the total funding, €440.5 million will go towards renewable hydrogen production under the third European renewable hydrogen auction. Around €304.1 million will support renewable fuels of non-biological origin, while €136.4 million will be directed to hydrogen projects focused on the maritime and aviation sectors. In Spain’s case, this support will be limited to renewable fuels of non-biological origin.
Spain will also contribute €50 million to the first European auction dedicated to reducing industrial process heat emissions. These funds will help projects that replace fossil fuels with electric technologies such as heat pumps and resistive or plasma heating systems, as well as with renewable heat sources including solar thermal and geothermal energy.
Under the Auctions-as-a-Service system, countries in the European Economic Area can use national funds to support projects that were placed on reserve lists in European auctions but were not selected due to budget constraints at the EU level. This allows governments to back eligible domestic projects without organising separate national tenders.
In its first participation in the scheme last year, Spain allocated €126.4 million to two green hydrogen projects that narrowly missed out on European funding due to limited budgets.
The hydrogen and industrial heat grants will be administered by the ministry’s implementing agency, the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving.
The ministry added that Spain has already committed more than €3.1 billion from its Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan to renewable hydrogen development and its related value chain.
