Going places: Assessing the hydrogen partnerships set up by EU member states

The European Union (EU) considers hydrogen to be an essential ingredient to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. To reach this goal the EU published its first hydrogen strategy in 2020. In its REPowerEU plan, announced after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and adopted in February 2023, the European Commission aims for 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen production in the EU and 10 million tons of imports of hydrogen by 2030. To facilitate these imports, the European Commission wants to conclude hydrogen partnerships with “reliable partner countries”. Some individual EU member states like Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands have already been actively engaged in so-called hydrogen diplomacy by concluding bilateral agreements with potential hydrogen supplier countries. However, it remains unclear if this hydrogen diplomacy is succeeding in its attempt to set up reliable partnerships. This paper aims to assess whether the concluded partnerships are reliable by first, assessing what a reliable partner country is, and second, by evaluating the already concluded hydrogen partnerships. By doing this, this study seeks to explore the energy security implications of the current partnerships on both sustainable, economic, and socio-political dimensions.