Actualizing the green hydrogen economy
Legal and financial considerations to advance sustainable energy
Green hydrogen can help decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors such as heavy-duty transport and some industrial processes where electrification can be difficult or impossible. This paper reviews the green hydrogen landscape providing insights on current and developing law and policy frameworks, finance, and bankability considerations, and provides recommendations to help advance the green hydrogen value chain considering key challenges and areas of opportunity.
Given the nascent nature of the clean hydrogen sector, alignment of the policy and regulatory architecture towards a Paris-aligned green hydrogen economy can provide important legal clarity, certainty and can create an enabling environment for stakeholder engagement across the value chain. Initiation of a clean hydrogen economy, in line with sustainable development goals, can be helped by:
- Facilitating investments via unlocking funds and foreign investment initiatives,
- Reducing financing costs via enabling access to low-cost finance,
- Creating a level-playing field for green hydrogen via operational subsidies until at least late 2030s,
- Creation of demand for green hydrogen via sectoral initiatives and obligations, and
- Reduction of the permitting and construction periods via facilitated permitting processes.
Several mechanisms can be used to help make green hydrogen projects economically more competitive and to facilitate investments. Read the report to learn more.
Green hydrogen is highly capital intensive and currently more expensive than its fossil counterpart, making it highly sensitive to financing conditions and policy support.
