Following the productive discussions at European Hydrogen Week in Brussels, Europe is now presented with a defining opportunity: to lead the charge for the decarbonisation of the transport sector, while ensuring its long-term resilience and the success of its local industrial players.
Europe stands at a crossroads between ambition and action. The urgency of cutting emissions is clear, but ambition alone will not get us there. Without careful planning, today’s targets risk becoming tomorrow’s bottlenecks.
A robust low-emission mobility strategy must be diverse. No sensible investor would put all their savings into a single stock, and the same logic applies to transport.
Batteries are essential, but hydrogen must also play its part. A balanced approach will make Europe more resilient, avoiding overdependence on any one resource, from fossil fuels to the critical minerals that power batteries.
Combining hydrogen and battery vehicles could save the European Union between €300 and €500 billion in infrastructure costs by 2050, largely by avoiding costly grid upgrades.
These technologies complement each other, particularly in heavy transport such as trucks, ships, and planes, where hydrogen offers efficiencies that electrification alone cannot. Countries such as South Korea and China have shown that well-designed ecosystems can drive the rollout of tens of thousands of hydrogen vehicles.
Europe has the same potential, with technology already in place across the entire chain from production and refuelling to vehicles. What we need now is a clear plan and the right conditions to make this shift happen.
How Europe can turn hydrogen ambition into action
First, Europe’s energy transition will be faster and cheaper if we treat battery and hydrogen solutions as complementary, rather than competitors. Both need supportive conditions to succeed, and both serve our communities.
A balanced approach would apply the same standards to both, ensuring European initiatives such as clean transport corridors and the decarbonisation of corporate fleets systematically support both hydrogen and electric charging infrastructure from day one.
Second, we must holistically build ecosystems, not just scattered stations. Scale and efficient loading are what truly bring costs down.
Funding schemes like the Netherlands’ SWiM (Subsidy Scheme for Zero-Emission Mobility), linking subsidies for both fleets and stations, demonstrate how this can be done efficiently.
This integrated model provides investors and manufacturers with the certainty they need to expand quickly, making infrastructure viable and vehicles more affordable.
Third, we must make hydrogen affordable for fleet operators from the very beginning. This means leveraging the most affordable and available hydrogen sources that already exist today, while simultaneously establishing a clear and binding timeline to decarbonise this hydrogen over time.
This pragmatic approach is already in place and proving successful in nations like China and South Korea.
A hydrogen future is Europe’s to win
By 2030, we need to see thousands of hydrogen trucks on European roads, enough to tip the balance on both fuel supply and production costs.
This rollout will not only pave the way for wider adoption across heavy-duty and other vehicles in the following decade, cutting CO₂ emissions, but it will also bolster Europe’s automotive resilience and industrial leadership.
The opportunity for society at large is significant, and the time for decisive action is now.
