AFIF grant: EU funds 4,200 charging points and 48 hydrogen refuelling stations

The EU Commission has selected 42 new infrastructure projects that will contribute to the construction of new charging stations, hydrogen refuelling stations, and the electrification of airports - and will therefore be subsidised. More specifically, with more than €424 million from EU funds.

The projects selected were determined as part of the fifth and final funding round of the current AFIF tender. They will contribute to installing 4,200 charging points, 48 hydrogen refuelling stations and electrifying ground handling services at 21 airports. The closing date for applications was the beginning of November 2023. According to the EU Commission, the budget of 424 million euros now allocated to the 42 projects will be coupled with financing from major financial institutions to maximise the impact of the EU grants.

A look at the list of the 42 approved projects linked below shows that, for example, 62 million euros will go to the Polish project “Clean Cities – Hydrogen Mob” to set up an H2 filling station network, or 30 million euros to the “Cross-E Cohesion” project to set up 706 HPC chargers (partly for electric trucks) in Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Tesla will receive around 10 million euros. In the fourth funding round, Tesla was the biggest beneficiary, receiving 148.7 million euros to construct 7,198 charging points with 250 kW each at 687 locations in 22 countries. 42 per cent of the previous funding amount went to the US electric car manufacturer alone.

The 42 projects are spread across several member states, with no projects being subsidised on German soil. However, a Dutch initiative selected for the grants (“Air Products’ European HRS Network”) also builds H2 refuelling stations in Germany.

In September 2023, the EU had already released 352 million euros as part of the fourth AFIF funding round for the construction of around 12,000 new charging points and 18 new H2 filling stations, among other things. Previously, €189 million had already been reserved in the third round in March 2023 for the construction of around 2,000 new charging points and 63 new H2 refuelling stations, among other things.

The funding will come from the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (AFIF). A new AFIF tender with a budget of 1 billion euros for 2024-2025 is already open for applications. The first deadline for applications is 24 September 2024. AFIF combines grants from the European Transport Infrastructure Programme and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) with capital from financial institutions to increase the impact of the investments. The main objective is to contribute to the decarbonisation of transport along the TEN-T network. TEN-T refers to a planned network of road, rail, air and water refuelling station connections in the European Union. It complements similar endeavours in the telecommunications and energy sectors.

According to the EU, its financial contribution will take the form of grants with different co-financing rates or standardised contributions, depending on whether the project is located in a country that is eligible for support from the Cohesion Fund or not. However, the funding confirmation is still provisional: the EU Commission still needs to formally adopt the funding decisions.

According to EU Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean, the EU has approved more than 1.3 billion euros for various projects through the AFIF since 2021, which have been used to install 26,396 electric charging stations and 202 hydrogen refuelling stations and to electrify ground operations at 63 airports. “This last call was the most successful regarding the projects’ number and quality so far, showing the growing interest in hydrogen and electric charging infrastructure.”

cinea.ec.europa.eu, cinea.ec.europa.eu (PDF, overview of the selected projects)