This briefing paper demonstrates a vision of how energy flows in the future electricity-hydrogen backbone can eloquently interact, in the spirit of the EU internal energy market. We use two future situations to illustrate this: a calm sunny day in spring, and a windy grey November day. Both cases demonstrate the interactions between electricity and hydrogen infrastructures in the future energy system.

The road to the new market structure envisioned in these two examples is still long, and EU and member state policies and regulations must acknowledge that an immature hydrogen market, beyond today’s hydrogen market in the petrochemical industry, cannot be approached in the same way as the fully developed hydrogen market sketched in this vision.

For several years, CIEP has been emphasizing that an integrated energy system transition approach is important. In such an approach both energy and feedstock requirements in all sectors of the economy are taken into account, as well as the delicate interrelationships between those sectors, often facilitated by complex energy infrastructures that gradually evolved over a period of many decades in the 20th century. Since 2017 CIEP contributed to the energy system transitions discourse by exploring how a low carbon energy system can benefit from a hydrogen backbone and how a hydrogen market can grow. This briefing paper builds on these insights.