Valencia, 14 July 2025
The Orange.Bat project, with a capacity of 100 MWe, located in Onda (Castellón) and promoted by Smartenergy, has been selected as one of the main beneficiaries of the European Hydrogen Bank’s “Auction as a Service” (AaaS) scheme. The selected projects were evaluated by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), with the aid to be managed at the national level by Spain’s Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDAE).
Supporting the decarbonisation of the Spanish ceramic cluster, the project received the highest premium among all awarded proposals, with a rate of €0.69 per kilogram of green hydrogen produced. This allocation highlights both the project’s technical maturity and its strategic significance for the Spanish industrial landscape.
Smartenergy states that the project successfully met CINEA’s demanding eligibility criteria, confirming not only its technical and financial viability, but also its advanced development status, administrative maturity, and clearly defined execution and commissioning schedule. This is reinforced by the strong commitment of industrial hydrogen consumers—primarily from the ceramic cluster—who have already expressed their intention to purchase 75% of the plant’s green hydrogen output as a partial replacement for the natural gas currently used in their combustion processes.
The support approved by IDAE will amount to a total of €82,526,858 over the first ten years of operation, linked to an expected total production of 119,604 tonnes of green hydrogen. This allocation falls under the AaaS – Renewable Hydrogen Auctions programme, designed to accelerate the deployment of this technology in hard-to-abate sectors.
The plant is currently at an advanced stage of the permitting process and has recently been granted the Integrated Environmental Authorization by the Valencian Community. It is the first green hydrogen project to receive this permit in the region and will provide a clean, locally produced energy vector, which is key for the Spanish ceramic sector to comply with its emission reduction targets in the coming years.
The Orange.Bat project, led by the Swiss investment firm Smartenergy, brings together key industrial players, electrolysis technology providers, construction companies, research centres, and institutional bodies. It also has the backing of the two main associations of the Spanish ceramic cluster: ASCER and ANFFECC.