France National Low-Carbon Hydrogen Strategy — 2025 actualisation (SNH II)

Mechanism

France's 2020 Stratégie nationale pour le développement de l'hydrogène décarboné set a 6.5 GW electrolyser-capacity target by 2030 and allocated €7.2 bn under the original France Relance envelope. SNH II, adopted at the Comité interministériel de l'Innovation on 10 April 2025, recalibrates this framework for the post-IRA / EU Green Deal Industrial Plan competitive environment.

Capacity targets: 6.5 GW low-carbon H₂ production capacity by 2030 (maintained), 10 GW by 2035 (new horizon). France treats both nuclear-electricity-based hydrogen and renewable-electricity-based hydrogen as "décarboné" under its national taxonomy — a deliberate divergence from EU RFNBO additionality rules that has been a persistent Franco-German fault line in EU hydrogen policy negotiations.

Price-support mechanism (€4 bn): A 15-year production-subsidy scheme covering the spread between low-carbon H₂ market prices and fossil H₂ costs. This mirrors the structure of the UK Hydrogen Production Business Model and the US §45V clean-hydrogen PTC, providing long-duration revenue certainty to electrolyser developers. Paired with the first H₂ call for tenders whose specifications were published the same week.

France 2030 hydrogen envelope (€9 bn total):

• €4 bn — electrolyser production support (new price mechanism above)
• €1.5 bn — demand-side uses (industrial processes, heavy mobility, synthetic fuels)
• €2 bn — IPCEI Hy2Tech and Hy2Use French-share co-funding
• Remainder — BTH IDH2 Technology-Bricks grants (relaunched) + synthetic-fuel feasibility studies

Sectoral demand priorities (in order): 1. Industrial decarbonisation: ammonia, methanol, refinery hydrogen substitution 2. Heavy mobility: trucks, shipping, aviation kerosene-substitution via synthetic fuels (e-SAF) 3. Grid-balancing / seasonal storage (longer horizon, not the primary 2030 driver)

New call for tenders for hydrogen vehicles: SNH II launches a separate tender for H₂-powered commercial utility vehicles (heavy trucks), addressing a gap in the 2020 strategy that focused mainly on production-side.

IPCEI alignment: France is co-signatory to both IPCEI Hy2Tech (22 EU members, electrolyser & fuel-cell manufacturing) and IPCEI Hy2Use (industrial usage pathways). SNH II explicitly extends the 2030 IPCEI co-funding commitment through the 2035 horizon.

Downstream implications

• France's insistence on nuclear-H₂ as "décarboné" puts the SNH taxonomy at odds with EU

RFNBO Delegated Act additionality rules; IPCEI state-aid approvals for nuclear-backed projects remain a Commission flashpoint

• The €4 bn price-support scheme will crowd in private capital for electrolyser OEMs (ITM,

McPhy, Elogen/Plug Power) seeking 15-year offtake certainty — comparable to IRA §45V in its bankability effect

• Synthetic-fuel feasibility studies target e-SAF and e-methanol for aviation and maritime,

intersecting with EU ReFuelEU Aviation and FuelEU Maritime mandates coming into force 2025

• Heavy-truck H₂ tender opens a commercial pathway for Stellantis/Symbio (JV with Michelin),

Toyota, and Hyzon-successor projects after the earlier FCH tender undersubscription

• The 10 GW-by-2035 target implies an ~250 GW electrolyser demand window for Western European

manufacturers if France + Germany (NWS) targets aggregate — significant capex signal

Open questions

• How will the price-support scheme interact with EU state-aid rules post-TCTF (Temporary

Crisis and Transition Framework) expiry and the permanent Green Deal Industrial Plan notification framework?

• Will the Commission accept nuclear-H₂ under IPCEI Hy2Tech state-aid without RFNBO-

equivalent additionality conditions?

• Timeline for first H₂ call-for-tenders results — initial applications likely H2 2025,

awards H1 2026

• Volume of BTH IDH2 Technology-Bricks second tranche (first tranche oversubscribed 3× in 2022)