The huge slew of projects in China could be hampered by a lack of hydrogen supply, especially of green hydrogen, former minister of industry Li Yizhong told during a recent conference.

This is even more severe in light of the rejection from the Australian government of the latest plans proposed for the 26-GW, $50-billion Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) in Western Australia. The project would have been the largest green energy and hydrogen endeavour in the world.

On the other hand, United States and Colombia showed some room for legal developments, which could allow for an increased public support for green hydrogen.

Meanwhile, Italy's Enel and Russian innovation development agency Rusnano are discussing collaboration opportunities to create Russia’s first green hydrogen production project at a wind farm in the Murmansk region.

In general, though, last week was mostly about small collaborations and projects, mostly in the Scandinavian countries.

Hydropower company Statkraft and utility company Skagerak Energi, both Norwegian companies, were chosen as suppliers of green hydrogen to a zero-emission bulkship by HeidelbergCement and Norwegian agricultural cooperative Felleskjøpet.

According to a pre-feasibility study, Iceland’s Landsvirkjun is in the right condition to start exporting green hydrogen from Iceland to the Port of Rotterdam from mid-2020s.

Developments also in Sweden, Germany and the UK.

This week

Commission’s VP Frans Timmermans (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) will be protagonist of the week. The Dutchman will hear today from the Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, before speaking at the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). He will also take part in the videoconference on energy and environmental collaboration between EU and Morocco. He will meet tomorrow with Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA or IEA).

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets on Wednesday with Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Iraqi prime minister, before traveling to Ljubljana to inaugurate the start of the Slovenian presidency of the Council.

Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson will talk about Baltic (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), while the High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell will be in Italy. Among other things, he will attend the G20 Ministerial on Foreign Affairs and Development (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Relatively quiet days at the Council. Today and tomorrow Agriculture and Fisheries Council on the CAP reform.

The European Parliament (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)will focus on the Western Balkans. President David Sassoli has invited the presidents of the parliaments of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia for the second summit of this kind.

Last week

"The share of renewable energy that achieved lower costs than the most competitive fossil fuel option doubled in 2020, a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows. 162 gigawatts (GW) or 62 per cent of total renewable power generation added last year had lower costs than the cheapest new fossil fuel option," IRENA wrote last week (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). That’s huge.

The Parliament approved the Climate Act (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), informally agreed with member states in April. The law turns the European Green Deal's political commitment to EU climate neutrality by 2050 into a binding obligation. It also increases the EU's emissions reduction target for 2030 from 40 percent to at least 55 percent. After 2050, the EU will aim for negative emissions. The approval of the Parliament was necessary for the plans of the European Commission (which is expected to present the package "Fit for 55" on July 14).

Negotiators reached an agreement on the EU's 270 billion euro farm subsidy package, but environmentalists (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and Greens in the Parliament said the deal was stripped of its original environmental ambitions.

"There was a discussion again about Russia. This was an opportunity, after a very good debate a month ago, to take a step forward and clarify how we want to approach the implementation of the five principles that we believe underpin relations with Russia... It is also important to engage in people-to-people contacts, to be engaged with Russian civil society and to uphold our values in terms of fundamental rights, as we have done regularly in recent months and years," Council President Charles Michel commented after the European Council (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

European leaders (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) also discussed pandemic, economic recovery, migration, Sahel, Libya, Belarus and Turkey.

The Council appointed three new EU Special Representatives (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for the Sahel, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into whether Google has violated EU competition rules (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) by favoring its own online advertising technology services, to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers.