On February 2, 2024, the Initiative Energien Speichern e.V. (INES) announced that it will conduct a Market Assessment for Hydrogen Storage (MAHS) between April 1, 2024 and April 30, 2024 to determine the specific demand structures for hydrogen storage. With the survey, INES will collect relevant information for investments in the development of hydrogen storage and make it available to storage operators and the relevant regulatory authorities on a non-discriminatory basis.
For the development of hydrogen storage systems required by the market economy, it is essential for storage system operators to gain knowledge of the specific demand structures and the associated user requirements. The storage operators have special expertise and therefore ask the relevant questions in order to enable a tailor-made development of storage capacities. The storage operators will drive the development of hydrogen storage systems in the emerging market framework in a customer- and competition-oriented manner. The market survey therefore serves to provide market players with the best possible access to hydrogen storage capacities in the future.
The background to the market survey is the future obligation of storage operators under Article 8 ("Market assessment for renewable gas and low-carbon gas by LNG and storage system operators") of the EU Regulation on internal markets for renewable gases, natural gas and hydrogen (from the EU gas package). The regulation stipulates that storage operators must carry out a market assessment for investments in storage facilities for renewable and low-carbon gases, including hydrogen, at least every two years. The storage operators are to inform the relevant regulatory authorities of the result of the market assessment.
In the past, individual storage system operators have already carried out market surveys. INES uses the experience gained from previous and future market surveys of individual storage system operators when conducting the market survey.
Sebastian Heinermann, INES Managing Director, explains the announcement as follows: "In future, the EU will oblige storage operators to determine the market demand for hydrogen storage so that well-founded investment planning can take place. The MAHS (Market Assessment for Hydrogen Storage) will not only help storage operators to implement the obligations arising from the gas package, but is primarily intended to provide answers to specific questions from storage operators in order to develop customer-oriented and competitive storage offers."
