"The deployment of the Swiss hydrogen strategy still lacks coherence"

In early January, Romande Energie announced the abandonment of its green hydrogen plant project in Montcherand. Launched in 2021, with an estimated budget of nearly 12 million francs, this project had long been presented as a first in French-speaking Switzerland. It was to produce hydrogen intended primarily for heavy goods vehicles, in order to reduce CO₂ emissions from road transport. However, the increasing electrification of heavy mobility over the past 2–3 years has reshuffled the cards and forced the DSO to revise its strategy.

For the hydrogen sector, whose future is very uncertain, this news is naturally not good and prompts renewed questioning about the real potential of hydrogen as a vector for the energy transition in Switzerland, between climate ambitions, economic constraints and markets that are shrinking fast. We discuss it this time with Simon Siggen, Senior Project Manager at the Nomads foundation.

What does this abandonment mean for the future of hydrogen in Switzerland?

Above all, it illustrates the cyclical difficulties facing the hydrogen sector, particularly in Switzerland, and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and the United States. It highlights an environment that is still fragile for this emerging technology, notably due to a lack of sufficient state support.

However, this situation should not be interpreted as a general rejection of hydrogen. Recent reports from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Hydrogen Council show, on the contrary, a significant development of projects worldwide, with particularly strong momentum in China and, more broadly, in Asia.

Do you fear a snowball effect across the entire sector?

What is most worrying is that an energy sector player, motivated and committed to decarbonization, as well as its potential customers — probably equally committed — are forced to give up a project that was nonetheless virtuous, for purely economic reasons. It is indeed likely that this situation is not isolated and that it will recur in other projects facing the same financial and regulatory constraints.

What major hydrogen projects are still underway in Switzerland today? What are the current ambitions for production growth in the coming years?

To date, the deployment of Switzerland's energy strategy still lacks overall coherence. The goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 must, to a large extent, be achieved thanks to the massive development of renewable energies, and in particular solar. At the same time, nuclear power plants will have to be shut down sooner or later.

The combination of these two factors is likely to exacerbate the seasonal imbalance between electricity production and consumption, which is not ideal from the point of view of supply security. The key challenges are therefore at two levels: accelerating the development of solar in Switzerland and finding credible solutions for seasonal energy storage.

However, current federal measures tend to significantly slow the deployment of solar and do not yet provide concrete answers to the problem of seasonal storage. In this context, hydrogen could constitute a relevant solution, by making it possible to valorize summer solar surpluses in the form of hydrogen, which could then be stored and used during the winter to help balance the energy system.

Emerging technologies like hydrogen have little chance of becoming established without long-term public intervention aimed at correcting this structural disadvantage.

Romande Energie mentions a problem of market outlets linked to the electrification of heavy mobility… What concrete markets for hydrogen remain today?

We still meet many economic actors eager to decarbonize their activities, but not at any price, at the risk of compromising their financial viability. This reality is an opportunity to recall that, for more than 150 years, the world has invested trillions of dollars in carbon-based energies — and that these investments continue today.

In many countries, fossil energies — relatively cheap nowadays — still benefit from direct or indirect support. These prices are artificially advantageous because they do not take into account future costs related to the environmental and climate impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments often hesitate to adopt unpopular measures that would incorporate these costs into energy prices.

In this context, emerging technologies like hydrogen have little chance of gaining ground without long-term public intervention aimed at correcting this structural disadvantage. The example of solar is instructive in this respect: this technology was supported for several decades in Switzerland, Europe, China and elsewhere, before becoming profitable and today one of the most competitive energy sources.

Will the future of our hydrogen supply not, ultimately, be linked to other countries and therefore imported?

If hydrogen were to develop massively — for example to decarbonize sectors such as air transport — the volumes required would probably exceed national production capacities. In that case, a significant share of supply would have to come from abroad. The Confederation is, moreover, working to negotiate Switzerland's connection to the European Hydrogen Backbone project. However, the question of financing the infrastructure necessary to cross Swiss territory remains to be resolved.

That said, partially depending on imports does not mean giving up the development of local capacities. If Switzerland does not develop skills in hydrogen across the entire value chain — production, storage, distribution and uses — it risks not being able to exploit this resource effectively.

That is why it is essential to support local projects in order to help build and generate certain skills and experiences. These foundations will, in the long run, allow a broader deployment of the various uses of hydrogen. The Confederation's strategy, published in December 2024, indeed describes this model of progressive development, but unfortunately allocates no means to it.

What would be needed to give hydrogen a new momentum in Switzerland?

To give hydrogen a new momentum in Switzerland, it would be necessary to reallocate significant financial resources to the development of mid-sized local ecosystems, similar to the initiative launched by the canton of Geneva with its fund dedicated to hydrogen development.

These resources should in particular make it possible to reduce the price of hydrogen in order to make it competitive as an alternative to carbon-based energies. Beyond the previously mentioned seasonal storage, the main markets would concern heavy mobility — road, air or lake transport — as well as certain industrial uses, in particular the production of high-temperature heat.

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