Luxembourg’s new zero-emissions strategy to bring hydrogen to heavy industry

Minister of Energy, Claude Turmes, presented a new three-part strategy to decarbonise the whole economy in the coming years

On Monday, the Luxembourgish Minister of Energy Claude Turmes presented the ‘Luxembourg Hydrogen Strategy’, a plan to prepare the country for the challenge of decarbonising the economy and energy sector through a series of measures, including the widespread adoption of hydrogen as a clean energy source.

A three-part approach

The plan envisions a sort of three-step approach to decarbonisation and lowering carbon emissions. Luxembourg’s first priority is energy efficiency, or otherwise, lowering the overall demand for electricity in households and businesses across the country.

The second step is direct electrification. After lowering demand, the plan calls for removing fossil fuels from the equation wherever it is possible and supplementing that with electricity. Then comes the third step – providing hydrogen generated from renewable sources to all sectors that have managed to slip by the previous two measures, like heavy industry.

The benefits of renewable hydrogen

The Luxembourgish decarbonisation strategy makes a clear distinction between renewable hydrogen and fossil hydrogen. Currently, consumption of fossil H2 is around 450 tonnes in the Grand Duchy and the main consumer is heavy industry.

This accounts for around 5,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, mainly because the process to produce the hydrogen is not very sustainable. What the government plans to do, though, is to promote the production of hydrogen from renewable energies. This technique allows energy to be stored and released without a carbon footprint, solving many of the problems with renewable energies, namely, the lack of storage capacity.

Here are the seven measures the plan proposes to promote the production, import and use of renewable hydrogen:

• Contribute to the definition of the legal and regulatory framework at the EU level;
• Cooperate with the EU Member States and third countries;
• Identify opportunities in Luxembourg - research and innovation;
• Go concrete - flagship projects to study and implement;
• Prioritise actions - towards targeted decarbonisation using renewable hydrogen;
• Develop instruments for a renewable hydrogen market;
• Implement and continuously improve - Taskforce H2 Luxembourg.

Minister Turmes was quoted in a press release, saying: "In certain sectors that are difficult to decarbonise by direct electrification, such as heavy industry, for example, hydrogen (H2) is a promising low-carbon alternative to support the progress of the energy transition.”