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The Energy Transition Investment Trends Report

BloombergNEF. Global energy transition investment by sector, 2020-2025

Figure: Global energy transition investment by sector, 2020-2025

Source: BloombergNEF

The Energy Transition Investment Trends (ETIT) Report, released by BloombergNEF (BNEF), finds that global investment in the energy transition reached a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, up 8% from the prior year.

✅ Main Takeaways:

📌 The largest investment drivers were:

electrified transport – $893 billion;
renewable energy – $690 billion;
grid investment – $483 billion.

📌 Renewable energy investment fell 9.5% year-on-year due to changing power market regulations in China.

📌 Hydrogen ($7.3 billon) and nuclear ($36 billion) saw investment drop in 2025. All other sectors grew: energy storage ($71 billion), CCS ($6.6 billion), clean shipping ($4.2 billion), electrified heat ($84 billion) and clean industry ($34 billion).

📌 Clean energy supply investment outpaced fossil fuel supply for a second consecutive year in 2025, with the gap widening to $102 billion from $85 billion in 2024.

📌 While clean energy investment continued to grow, fossil fuel supply investment fell for the first time since 2020, declining by $9 billion year-on-year.

📌 Despite energy transition investment being at an all-time high, growth has slowed steadily, from 27% in 2021 to 8% in 2025.

📌 The regional changes:

China ($800 billion) is posting its first decline in investment since 2013.
The EU shrugged off headwinds to grow 18% to $455 billion, contributing the most to the global uptick.
US investment also moved up 3.5% to $378 billion, despite the Trump administration’s moves to slow the energy transition.

➡️ Source: BloombergNEF Finds Global Energy Transition Investment Reached Record $2.3 Trillion in 2025, Up 8% from 2024

Posted By : admin 24 Jan, 2026

Clean Energy Technology Observatory

Clean Energy Technology Observatory: Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin in the European Union – 2025 Status Report on Technology Development, Trends, Value Chains and Markets

✅ Some Key Takeaways:

📌 Technology status

RFNBO production technologies involve electrolysers and the downstream conversion of renewable hydrogen into synthetic fuels, mostly based on established industrial processes using fossil-based inputs, now adapted for renewable hydrogen and captured carbon CO2 or N2 as feedstocks.
Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) vary from 5–7 for innovative variants, up to 8–9 for commercially ready pathways like e-methanol and e-CH₄.
Most RFNBO technologies are at pilot or early commercial scale, with no fundamental technical barriers, but with substantial economic and infrastructure challenges to overcome.
Installed capacity remains modest, with approximately 35 operational e-methane plants in 2024 and total EU e-fuel capacity below 0.5 Mt/year, although project pipelines (45 announced e-kerosene (SAF) projects and several Power-to-X (PtX) hubs) are expected to expand capacity to a few hundred thousand tons per year by 2030.
Cost trends indicate strong learning effects: CAPEX for synthesis plants is projected to decrease by 30–35% by 2050. By 2030, several studies estimated production costs at €1.6–2.3 per litre of diesel equivalent for e-methanol and over €3.5 per litre for Fischer–Tropsch fuels, but the current trend could push these costs higher.

📌 Investment and funding

Public funding for research and innovation under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe has reached €200 million for over 40 projects, focused on RFNBO production.
Other EU initiatives can also indirectly finance RFNBO projects by leveraging complementary funding streams, EU public support for innovation readiness, and private capital for commercialisation and scale-up.
Commercial-scale projects still rely heavily on public guarantees and offtake agreements.

📌 Value chain

The RFNBO value chain integrates renewable hydrogen production, CO2/N2 capture, chemical synthesis, and fuel distribution, spanning multiple industrial sectors.
Early deployment is concentrated in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain.
The economic potential is considerable: RFNBO could contribute over €40–60 billion annually to the EU economy by 2040, creating up to 200,000 direct and indirect jobs in the hydrogen, chemical, and transport sectors.

📌 EU positioning and global competitiveness

The EU maintains global leadership in RFNBO research, demonstration, and regulatory frameworks, but lags behind the US and China in commercial scale-up.
Under the Net-Zero Industry Act, the EU aims to secure 40% domestic production of strategic net-zero emission technologies by 2030.

➡️ Source: Clean Energy Technology Observatory: Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin in the European Union – 2025 Status Report on Technology Development, Trends, Value Chains and Markets

Posted By : admin 10 Jan, 2026

Fitness Check on EU Energy Security

The European Commission has just published a ‘fitness check’ of EU legislation on electricity and gas security of supply, looking both at past performance and what lies ahead. The document acknowledges that energy security in the EU will look very different in a decarbonised, electrified and geopolitically changed energy system.

✅ Key future developments include:

The evolving role of electricity and natural gas in a highly electrified, integrated energy system.
Protecting consumers and critical energy needs amid electrification and the phase-out of natural gas.
The growing role of new energy carriers such as biomethane and hydrogen.
Diversification of supply in response to geopolitical shifts and a stronger focus on homegrown clean energy.
The importance of critical raw materials for resilient clean-tech supply chains.
The increasing impact of climate change on EU energy security.

☑️ These points are clarified by the following:

📌 The energy transition will have a profound effect on the future security of gas and electricity supply. Phasing out imported fossil fuels and instead relying on homegrown renewable energy sources will have a substantial positive impact on the EU’s energy security. At the same time, a more electrified and decarbonised energy system requires a different management approach, with greater flexibility.

📌 Biomethane will become increasingly relevant for energy security. Under the Hydrogen and Decarbonised Gas Package, biomethane is now explicitly included in the definition of “natural gas”, meaning the Gas Security of Supply Regulation will apply to it from 2025 onwards. However, biomethane has very different characteristics compared to fossil gas: seasonal production, strong reliance on local resources, and predominantly decentralised injection into distribution grids. Importantly, biomethane-fired generation is still expected to contribute to electricity security by 2050 by providing flexible backup for variable renewables.

📌 Hydrogen will also become important for the future energy security framework, particularly for hard-to-abate sectors, and as a source of flexibility for the power system. Long-term storage, e-gases and e-fuels can all support security of supply. However, hydrogen will not simply “replace” natural gas. Its system role will be fundamentally different, and the deployment of electrolysers must be carefully aligned with grid capacities and broader decarbonisation pathways.

Overall, this ‘fitness check’ makes one thing very clear:

Energy security is no longer just about conventional fuels;
Energy security is about system design, flexibility, resilience, and smart regulation.

➡️ Source: Commission publishes “fitness check” on EU laws covering the security of electricity and gas supply in view of future revision

Posted By : admin 16 Dec, 2025

Innovation Fund in Transport Sector

Innovation Fund. Some Facts about Transport Sector. Since 2020, the Innovation Fund has supported: Aviation technologies, Road transport technologies, Maritime technologies, Fuel production, Batteries for vehicles

Innovation Fund: number of projects per fuel type, total grant per fuel type

How the Innovation Fund Supports the Decarbonisation of the EU Transport Sector

In a recent publication, the European Commission presented a factsheet on projects supported by the Innovation Fund, with total funding exceeding €4.8 billion.

✅ What is the Innovation Fund?

The Innovation Fund:

is one of the EU’s key financial instruments for deploying net-zero and innovative technologies.
is funded by revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and supports the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors.
provides grants to breakthrough projects across a wide range of sectors in the European Economic Area (EEA).

☑️ What technologies in the transport sector does the Innovation Fund support?

the production and use of sustainable fuels
the electrification of transport systems
the manufacturing and recycling of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs)
the construction and retrofitting of low- and zero-carbon ships, aircraft, and heavy-duty vehicles

✅ Key Takeaways:

📌 Out of 272 ongoing and awarded projects, more than one-third focus on transport decarbonisation, receiving around one-third of total grants (€4.8 billion).

📌 Transport-related projects are expected to deliver approximately 29% of the Innovation Fund’s total emission reductions during their first ten years of operation, cutting 334 million tonnes of CO2.

📌 The largest share of mobility projects in the Innovation Fund portfolio relates to fuel production (47 projects). More than 45% of these projects are expected to supply their output exclusively to the transport sector, while the remainder plan to serve multiple off-takers, with transport among the key beneficiaries.

➡️ Source: Driving decarbonisation in mobility through the innovation fund

Posted By : admin 12 Dec, 2025

Updates about RED III and ReFuelEU Aviation in Germany

Updates about Transposition of RED III and ReFuelEU Aviation in Germany

On 10 December, the German Federal Cabinet approved the draft of a Second Law on the Further Development of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Quota.

This quota, as the central legal instrument for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fuels, shall gradually make refueling more climate-friendly. It specifies the extent to which fuel suppliers must reduce CO2 emissions by using sustainable biofuels, renewable hydrogen-based fuels, or electricity for electric vehicles.

➡️ The Draft of Law is available via this link: Entwurf eines Zweiten Gesetzes zur Weiterentwicklung der Treibhausgasminderungs-Quote

✅ Key Points of the Draft Law:

📌 The draft law implements the amendments to the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), whose targets must be achieved by 2030. To provide greater investment security, the German government extends the timeline to 2040, going beyond the RED III, to support long-term corporate investment planning.

📌 The law serves to implement the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation at the national level with regard to fuels.

📌 The draft law includes amendments to the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) and the Regulation on the crediting of electricity-based fuels and co-processed biogenic oils towards the greenhouse gas quota (37th BImSchV).

📌 It introduces definitions of aviation fuel suppliers and distributors, as well as penalties for aviation fuel suppliers that fail to comply with their obligations under the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation with regard to the share of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF):

EUR 4,700 per tonne for SAF
EUR 17,000 per tonne for synthetic aviation fuels or e-SAF.

📌 It defines the eligibility criteria for e-SAF and renewable hydrogen for aviation.

📌 It establishes minimum shares of RFNBOs for fuel suppliers (excluding aviation fuel suppliers):

0.1% from 2026
0.5% from 2028
1.2% from 2030
1.5% from 2032
2.5% from 2034
4.0% from 2036
5.0% from 2037
6.0% from 2038
7.0% from 2039
8.0% from 2040

☑️ Next Steps:

The law will enter into force on the second day after its publication in the Federal Law Gazette.
The Draft Law must now be submitted to the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and the German Bundestag for debate. Approval by the Federal Council is not required. However, the Bundestag may still introduce amendments.
After adoption by the Bundestag, the law can be submitted to the Federal President for signature and then published.
The legislative process is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.

🔗 Source: Klimafreundlicher tanken, neue Nachfrage für grünen Wasserstoff: Bundesregierung beschließt Gesetzesnovelle zur Treibhausgasminderungs-Quote

Posted By : admin 7 Dec, 2025

2025 Carbon Market Report

On 3 December 2025, the European Commission published the 2025 Carbon Market Report, confirming that the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) continues to function effectively and remains a key pillar of Europe’s climate policy.

As part of the State of the Energy Union Report, the assessment:

▪️ Reviews EU ETS performance in 2024 and early 2025
▪️ Confirms the continued decline in emissions across power and industry.

✅ Key takeaways:

🔹 Overall progress

EU ETS emissions from power and industry are now around 50% below 2005 levels.
The system remains on track for the 2030 target: –62% emissions

🔹 Power & Industry

2024 emissions from power installations fell by almost 11% compared to 2023
Overall fuel combustion emissions across power + industry declined by 9%

🔹 Aviation

EU ETS prices for intra-European aviation increased around 15% in 2024
- ➡️ Key Drivers: continued growth in aviation emissions and expanded coverage, including flights to the EU’s outermost regions
The EU ETS also started rewarding airlines for their use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) through additional allowance allocation, and the EU became the first jurisdiction to introduce monitoring and reporting of non-CO2 aviation effects.
SAF incentives under EU ETS
- The ETS carbon price already provides an incentive of around EUR 200 per tonne of SAF used, compared to fossil kerosene.
- Additional ETS support measures implemented in 2025: €500 – €7,000 per tonne of eligible SAF on ETS routes and applicable since 1 January 2024.
- For 2024, the incentive from EU ETS was worth around EUR 25 million, supplemented by ETS support of about 1.3 million allowances worth approximately EUR 100 million
CORSIA alignment
- Limited intra-European EU ETS scope extended to end-2026
- Full application of ICAO CORSIA expected from 2027

🔹 Maritime

2024 marked the inclusion of shipping in the EU ETS
Coverage:
- 100% of emissions between EEA ports & at EEA ports
- 50% of emissions from voyages to/from non-EEA ports
Compliance was high: shipping companies surrendered allowances for more than 99% of their relevant surrendering requirements by the 30 September deadline.
In 2025, shipping companies surrendered allowances for 40% of their 2024 emissions

🔹 EU ETS funding the clean transition

€38.8 billion raised in 2024
Revenues support:
- National climate action
- Clean energy investments
- Innovation Fund
- Modernisation Fund
- Recovery & Resilience Facility (REPowerEU)

☑️ Total ETS revenues now exceed €250 billion

➡️ Source: 2025 Carbon Market Report: EU ETS lowers power sector emissions and expands to maritime transport

Posted By : admin 4 Dec, 2025

New EU funding opportunities

EU Funding Opportunities: + 5,2 billion Euro for clean transition Technologies

Third Auction under the European Hydrogen Bank. Budget: €1.3 billion. Deadline date 19 February 2026 17:00:00 Brusselstime.

🚀 On 4 December 2025, the European Commission has launched three major new funding opportunities under the EU Innovation Fund, mobilising €5.2 billion from EU ETS revenues to support the scale-up of net-zero technologies, clean hydrogen production, and industrial heat decarbonisation.

✅ Main Funding Opportunities:

🔹 IF25 Net-Zero Technologies Call – €2.9 billion

📌 Supporting innovative, mature decarbonisation projects across various scales, including manufacturing of components for:

Renewables & energy storage
Heat pumps
Hydrogen production
EV batteries

📌 Projects are assessed on GHG reduction potential, innovation, maturity, replicability, and cost efficiency.

📌 A new bonus point is introduced for projects led exclusively by SMEs, recognising their role in driving innovation.

📅 Info Day: 16 December 2025

🔹 3rd Auction of the European Hydrogen Bank – €1.3 billion

📌 Scaling up production of RFNBO hydrogen and electrolytic low-carbon hydrogen, including a new topic for aviation and maritime off-takers.

📌 Support is provided via a fixed premium per kg of verified hydrogen produced for up to 10 years, increasing price certainty and bankability for projects.

📅 Info Day: 10 December 2025

🔹 1st Auction for Decarbonising Industrial Process Heat – €1 billion

📌 The auction dedicated to industrial process heat, targeting one of Europe’s largest unaddressed emissions sources.

📌 Supported technologies include:

Heat pumps & electric boilers
Resistance & induction heating
Solar thermal & geothermal heat
Hybrid solutions

📌 Funding is granted as a fixed premium per unit of verified decarbonised heat for up to 5 years, awarded to the most cost-effective CO₂ abatement projects.

📅 Info Day: 16 December 2025

Member States can complement EU funding for high-scoring projects that miss out due to budget limits:

📌 Germany: additional €1.3 billion for RFNBO hydrogen projects

📌 Spain: €465 million total:

€415 million for hydrogen
€50 million for industrial heat decarbonisation

☑️ What’s next?

📌 Applicants are strongly encouraged to attend the Info Day.

📌 Signing of grant agreements:

NZT projects – expected Q1 2027
Auction projects – within 9 months of call closure.

➡️ Source: €5.2 billion of EU Emissions Trading revenues earmarked for clean transition technologies under the Innovation Fund

Posted By : admin 3 Dec, 2025

ACER’s European hydrogen markets 2025 Monitoring Report

The ACER’s European hydrogen markets provides 2025 Monitoring Report a realistic snapshot of the current state of development of the European hydrogen market.

✅ Key Takeaways:

📌 As of October 2025, only two Member States, Denmark and Ireland, have notified the Commission of the completion of RED III transposition.

📌 Despite a strong 51% annual increase in installed electrolyser capacity in the EU in 2024, the installed capacity of 308 MW (2024) and the 1.8 GW capacity under construction still fall well short of a realistic trajectory toward the 2030 EU (40 GW) and Member States (48-54 GW) targets.

📌 At around 8 EUR/kgH2, the average cost of RFNBO hydrogen in the EU currently remains four times higher than that of conventional hydrogen from natural gas (just over 2 EUR/kg).

📌 Electricity supply costs, excluding grid tariffs, may account for up to 50% of the levelised cost of renewable hydrogen, depending on the electricity supply mix, with substantial regional variations across the EU.

📌 Uncertain future demand for renewable hydrogen, driven by the current cost, makes it difficult for hydrogen network operators (HNOs) to align network development with demand evolution, increasing the financial risks associated with this uncertainty. Adaptive network planning, reflecting the latest market trends, is essential to ensure efficient investment and cost control.

📌 Low-carbon hydrogen produced from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) could support market development and accelerate decarbonisation in some sectors. With current production cost estimates at just below 3 EUR/kg, low-carbon hydrogen with CCS is more competitive than renewable hydrogen.

📌 Funding availability is increasing, but implementation remains slow. The European Commission has allocated more than €20 billion through various hydrogen-related programmes, including auctions under the European Hydrogen Bank. In addition, the EU Hydrogen Mechanism has been launched to facilitate supply–demand matching and accelerate hydrogen market creation.

Hydrogen progress hampered by high costs and slow transposition. Delays in transposing EU rules at national level persist. 2 Member States transposed the amended Renewable Energy Directive into national law.

308 MW electrolyser capacity reached in 2024, way behind EU targets for the year (6 GW). Renewable hydrogen (H2) is 4x more expensive than fossil-based hydrogen. Low-carbon hydrogen could offer a cheaper solution, but cost and technical uncertainties remain. Electricity costs alone account for up to 50% of renewable hydrogen production costs.

➡️ Source: The European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators. European hydrogen markets 2025 Monitoring Report

Posted By : admin 1 Dec, 2025

Small Modular Reactors – Future Development and Deployment in Europe

📢 Call for Evidence: “Small Modular Reactors – Future Development and Deployment in Europe”

On 6 November, the European Commission launched a public consultation to help shape the upcoming EU Strategy on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).

🗓️ Open until: 4 December 2025

➡️ Participate here: Small modular reactors – future development and deployment in Europe

✅ What is this initiative about?

📌 The Commission plans to adopt an SMR Strategy in Q1 2026 (via a Commission Communication) aimed at creating a supportive industrial, economic, and policy framework to accelerate SMR deployment across Europe with first projects expected in the early 2030s.

📌 The strategy seeks to:

Strengthen the competitiveness of the EU industry;
Foster innovation in nuclear technologies;
Provide a coherent EU approach, complementing national initiatives.

☑️ Why does it matter?

📌 More than 10 EU Member States have already expressed interest in deploying SMRs as part of their national energy and climate plans.

📌 SMRs are seen as a potential source of clean, flexible electricity and heat for residential and industrial use, including low-carbon hydrogen and efuel production.

📌 Key advantages include simplified design, enhanced safety features, factory production, reduced construction and operational costs, flexibility for multiple energy uses, and contributions to grid stability.

✅ Strategy objectives:

Building on the work of the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs, the upcoming Communication will focus on:

Strengthening collaboration to develop a robust EU supply chain
Enhancing regulatory cooperation and streamlining licensing processes
Reinforcing EU leadership in research and innovation, including start-up and scale-up partnerships
Securing a reliable nuclear fuel cycle
Preserving and developing skills and expertise across Europe
Addressing investment barriers
Supporting public engagement and trust-building initiatives

Posted By : admin 16 Nov, 2025

Green Hydrogen & RFNBO Criteria

Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne gGmbH (EWI). Green hydrogen production under RFNBO criteria ‐ Analyzing the system and business case perspective.

Today I took a closer look at a new EWI study: “Green hydrogen production under RFNBO criteria – Analyzing the system and business case perspective” (2025).

✅ Key Takeaways:

This analysis examines the impact of the RFNBO criteria on green hydrogen production from system and business perspectives, with particular attention to how the criteria affect costs, capacity expansion, and the need for system flexibility.

📌 From a system perspective:

Implementing all RFNBO criteria increases electrolysis capacity by over 3% across Europe to meet predefined demand, while average full-load hours decline by around 200 hours.
Applying all RFNBO criteria with hourly matching increases average hydrogen supply costs by around 10 EUR/MWh (+8%) across Europe, driven primarily by additionality requirements and the shift from daily to hourly matching.
In Germany, expected to be the largest hydrogen offtaker in Europe, the impact on marginal hydrogen costs is higher than the EU average (+16%).
These effects highlight distributional impacts between sectors: while marginal electricity costs decline due to surplus renewables entering the market, additional system costs remain within the hydrogen sector. This implies a cost shift from electricity consumers to hydrogen producers.
Average EU electricity costs fall by around 5%, and marginal CO₂ certificate costs by around 2%.
Applying all RFNBO criteria adds over 25 GWel of additional RES capacity across Europe. In Germany, total installed RES capacity increases by 17%.
Adding RFNBO criteria reallocates capacities from the electricity market to hydrogen production.
With stricter temporal correlation requirements, hydrogen production increasingly relies on RES with high full-load hours (onshore and offshore wind), leaving more volatile solar generation to the electricity market.

📌 From a business perspective:

Tighter matching requirements push portfolios toward dedicated renewables and short-term flexibility.
Under Hourly Matching and a baseload supply profile, PV is often combined with large batteries; adding hydrogen storage can shift flexibility from the electricity sector to the hydrogen sector.
Results show that LCOH are more sensitive to constraints from the business perspective: in the baseline, they rise from around 150 EUR/MWh (No Criteria) to almost 180 EUR/MWh (Hourly Matching), an increase of +19%, with the largest jump occurring between Daily and Hourly Matching.
Sensitivity analyses reveal a much stronger impact than in the system perspective, especially under Hourly Matching, where LCOH range from about 170 EUR/MWh up to 370 EUR/MWh.
The difference between Monthly and Hourly Matching spans from roughly 15 EUR/MWh to over 90 EUR/MWh.

➡️ Source: EWI (2025). Green hydrogen production under RFNBO criteria ‐ Analyzing the system and business case perspective.

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