COP26 Glasgow, page-3

And from the FT:

Europe to invest €1bn in clean technologies such as green hydrogen

Europe [er, the EU?] will aim to get new climate technologies to market faster under a €1bn public and private investment scheme announced by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at COP26 on Tuesday.

The EU Catalyst programme, launched in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the European Investment Bank, will finance and commercialise breakthrough clean technologies, such as green hydrogen.

“It is innovation that leads the way,” von der Leyen said of the programme on Tuesday, which she added would finance “industries’ innovation, breakthrough innovation, to bring the newest climate technologies to the market in Europe”.

The EU has named green hydrogen as a vital technology in the continent’s path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The catalyst partnership will begin selecting projects for funding from next year.

Brussels last year launched a “hydrogen alliance” with European industry to help ramp up the production of expensive clean hydrogen, which it sees as a critical way of reducing CO2 emissions in the steel industry and road haulage, which are harder to decarbonise.

Money will also go to projects to develop sustainable aviation fuels that do not yet exist at scalable levels for long-haul commercial flights and are far more expensive than traditional highly polluting kerosene. Carbon capture and storage technologies will also be eligible for investment.

At a small press conference later in the afternoon, Gates said that the fund was intended to reduce the “green premium” - the estimated $5tn a year cost gap between often cheaper fossil fuels and more expensive renewable technology. “Innovation can bear a lot of the burden of trying to reduce the affordability gap to do these things,” he said.

Brussels will contribute money from the EU budget and hopes to leverage three euros of private capital for every euro of public money. Half of all financing for projects will be raised by the partnership, with the other half from private investment.