Imports of green hydrogen and its derivates to Germany in a climate neutral future

The latest geopolitical events have shown Germany’s current dependency on fossil energy carriers and the countries exporting them. To reach its goal of becoming climate neutral by 2045, Germany needs to expand its energy generation from renewable sources massively. Nevertheless, due to limited renewable energy potentials, there will still be a need to import energy in form of green hydrogen produced by electrolysis and green hydrogen derivates such as Ammonia or Methanol.

Since these synthetic energy carriers will play an important role in the future, their import shares in Germany and therefore Germany’s future dependency on exporting countries are of particular interest. Corresponding geopolitical aspects were among the topics of the “Conference on the Geopolitics of the Green Hydrogen Transition”, which was held by GIZ in Berlin in December 2022 as part of the “H2-Diplo” initiative. At this conference, the paper “Imports of green hydrogen and is derivates to Germany in a climate neutral future – A meta study” was presented, which deals with the questions described above.