“The energy transition, as we see it: I tell you honestly and I don’t think I’m wrong to say that the future will belong to hydrogen and the transition must be done through gas. There are still things to be regulated in Brussels, the limit is not yet clear for the gas transition. We consider that without this transition it is an impossible mission,” said Petru Rușeț, managing director, Siemens Energy Romania, writes e-nergia.ro.

“However, we are ready and at the moment Siemens’ gas turbine portfolio already offers partial hydrogen operation, a mix of 15% gas and hydrogen. So things are evolving, we are already in the future. But on the other hand we must say here that we must come down with a price per kg of hydrogen from 6 euros to 1.5 euros by 2030.

This is key to being able to use hydrogen in the quantities we talked about, in GW. But it is not possible to get there without pilot projects and we are waiting to see to what extent the energy transition in Romania will be helped by European funds because without them, unfortunately, the price of energy (of the transition) will be paid in a very short while by the final consumer,” Rușeț also explained.

“I can say that any technology we has developed over time and has had several phases. From the perspective of hydrogen, things have advanced and we are in commercial solutions between 20 and 100 MW and the target is 1,000 MW. In the next 5-10 years it can be done. It all depends on how much of the OPEX area will be provided from European funds. Otherwise, the hydrogen business case will be difficult to build,” said the Siemens Energy official.

Ruşeţ also said that the current European funds can cover a 25-year financing gap that has accumulated in Europe in the area of electricity production, financing that will lead the generation capacities to “state of the art.”