Boost to industry - Moeve in Spain2 Mar 2026 18:51
One of Europe’s most ambitious projects to produce green hydrogen has secured final investment approval, offering a rare boost to a sector that has suffered a wave of cancellations and delays in recent years.
Moeve, the $12bn energy group owned by the United Arab Emirates’ Mubadala and US private equity firm Carlyle, will confirm on Monday that its board has authorised the first phase of what it says will become Europe’s largest renewable hydrogen plant.
The initial stage of the Andalusian Green Hydrogen Valley development in southern Spain will involve more than €1bn of investment, including over €300mn in EU subsidies, to construct a 300MW electrolyser alongside new solar and wind generation.
The company, formerly known as Cepsa, said it had secured a connection to the Spanish power grid last week, overcoming a key obstacle to new industrial projects, and expects production to begin in 2029.
Green hydrogen is produced by using huge amounts of renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Moeve argues that Andalusia’s sunny and windy weather makes it one of the few places in Europe capable of producing the fuel competitively.
At the height of its enthusiasm for hydrogen in 2022, Brussels forecast that renewable hydrogen could meet 10 per cent of the EU’s energy needs by 2050, with applications spanning heavy industry, transport and heating.
But the high cost of producing green hydrogen, and a lack of both infrastructure and demand from buyers, has led to more than 50 projects being delayed or abandoned in the past two years.
Moeve chief executive Maarten Wetselaar acknowledged the slowdown but insisted the long-term case for the technology remained intact.
“We have not changed plan. The trend we are on is the energy transition. The climate science has not changed,” he told the FT. “This world is coming, unless we accept that we stop caring about climate change, and I’m happy to put our strategy behind that not happening.”
The Andalusian project is designed to reach 2GW of electrolysis capacity in later phases, overtaking Sweden’s Stegra project to build a green hydrogen-powered steel plant.
Wetselaar characterised the shake-out in the sector as a “natural cycle”. “Two or three years ago, every mayor in Germany or the Netherlands wanted their own electrolyser and there were hundreds of projects around Europe,” he said. “What we have gone through is a very natural cycle of everybody starting to understand the fundamental economics.”
Werner Ponikwar, chief executive of hydrogen electrolyser manufacturer Thyssenkrupp Nucera, last month also said the market “continues to consolidate”.
“Many plant projects are reaching a stage where they are either being approved or finally cancelled. Our pipeline has been reduced in a number of projects and its overall value, but it is also way more focused and healthy than a year ago,” he said, adding that the two markets where momentum was building most clearly were Europe and Ind
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