At the annual meeting in MissionGreenFuels this year the updated roadmap for green fuels in transport and industry served as a vital foundation. The meeting was held on the 24th and 25th of March 2025 at DTU in Kongens Lyngby.

By  Julie Søgaard

The updated roadmap for green fuels, which originally was published in 2021, has been developed by Rambøll in collaboration with the MissionGreenFuels partnership.

“The purpose of the updated roadmap is to be a guide for Danish activities and funding on, where the Danish strength positions are and where we want to go in terms of green fuels, so everybody can steer in the same direction,” Global Advisor at Rambøll Eva Ravn Nielsen, says.

The roadmap has a full edition and a pixie version where you can download and look up the key takeaways.

“Some of the takeaways are, that Denmark covers the whole value chain of green fuels and has a very strong innovation community,” Eva Ravn Nielsen says.

And the green energy transition needs green fuels including e-fuels and biofuels for e.g. shipping, aviation and industry.

“For these sectors it’s crucial to have fuels that can replace fossil fuels – and e-fuels and green fuels will be the solution you cannot go on without when we have to decarbonize and solve the global warming issue,” Eva Ravn Nielsen says.

Expects that the mission partnership can deliver

In October 2024 the Danish government published the initiative “Fart på fremtidens grønne løsninger – En styrket indsats for grøn forskning, innovation og klimaløsninger,” where one of the key messages is that the mission driven approach to research and innovation in green solutions should be strengthened.

Christian Bræin, Senior Advisor at The Ministry of Higher Education and Science, presented the initiative at the annual meeting and he hopes that the MissionGreenFuels partnership is able to deliver some of the green solutions needed.

“Our expectation is that the mission partnership can deliver on the overall mission goals by developing new green fuels through, for instance, power-to-X, to different sectors, where electrification is not possible. So, it can have a real effect and impact on the CO2 emissions by 2030 and 2050,” he says.

Not an easy task to build a hydrogen backbone

One of the central bricks in green fuels is hydrogen. Here, Denmark recently revived its plan to build a pipeline delivering green hydrogen to Germany by 2030.

Energinet plays an important role in building and operate the future Danish hydrogen backbone.

Thomas Dalgas Fechtenburg, Senior Manager at Energinet, stressed in his presentation that one of the most important features of the hydrogen backbone is its linepack flexibility, which refers to the volume of gas that can be “stored” in a gas pipeline.

“And of course the business case for the developers, making the levelized cost of hydrogen lower, and hence being able to phase in more renewables. So, on a more holistic scale, it’s basically enabling more renewables into our system,” he says.

But building a hydrogen infrastructure is not an easy task.

“The most obvious point is that we’ve never done it before. There is no existing hydrogen market or hydrogen off-takers in Denmark. So, it’s a classical chicken and the egg issue,” Thomas Dalgas Fechtenburg says and continues:

“And the investments, even in a governmental perspective or country level, is also very uncertain. Someone has to make the first guarantees or investments so the rest of the parties will partake and start investing as well.”