De-risking Hydrogen? The EU’s Clean-Tech Strategy under Geopolitical Pressure

The acceleration of the energy transition has turned clean technologies into a central arena of geopolitical and geoeconomic competition. For the European Union, renewable hydrogen occupies a pivotal role in this shift, not only as a decarbonisation tool for energy-intensive industries, but also as a test case for the EU’s ambition to develop clean-tech strategic autonomy in a context of deepening dependencies on China. China’s dominance across clean-tech manufacturing, electrolyser supply chains, and the production and processing of critical energy minerals fundamentally shapes the options available to the EU as it seeks to reconcile climate objectives, industrial competitiveness, and energy security. This paper examines how the emerging “new geopolitics of energy” is reshaping EU strategies around renewable hydrogen and hydrogen-based industrial value chains. It asks what drives and constrains the EU’s pursuit of strategic autonomy in this sector, and to what extent external instruments are capable of de-risking hydrogen value chains without reproducing new dependencies or undermining climate and justice goals. Building on a geoeconomic and global value chain perspective, the paper revisits three stylised future pathways for hydrogen-based industrial production and reinterprets them through the lens of EU strategic autonomy. A first fuel-switch scenario assumes the decarbonisation of existing European industrial clusters through imported renewable hydrogen and hydrogen-based inputs. While politically attractive in terms of preserving industrial geography, this pathway risks entrenching external dependencies on hydrogen imports, electrolysers, and critical minerals, many of which remain embedded in China-centred value chains. A second industrial relocation scenario envisages the movement of energy-intensive industries towards regions with abundant renewable resources, potentially reducing energy costs but raising concerns over deindustrialisation, employment, and the erosion of domestic support for ambitious EU climate policy. A third hybrid scenario combines hydrogen production and intermediate processing in partner countries with final manufacturing stages retained within the EU, closely aligning with current EU narratives around Global Gateway partnerships and “friend-shoring”. Empirically, the paper draws on a qualitative analysis of key EU policy documents, including the EU Hydrogen Strategy, REPowerEU, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and Global Gateway communications, to assess how strategic autonomy and de-risking are conceptualised and operationalised. The analysis reveals a growing tension between the EU’s green industrial policy ambitions and the structural constraints imposed by fragmented internal governance, state aid asymmetries, and limited leverage in external partnerships. The paper concludes that without stronger integration between climate policy, industrial strategy, and external action, the EU risks shifting from climate leadership towards a narrower competitiveness-driven agenda, with ambiguous implications for both strategic autonomy and a just energy transition.