The European State of Play in the Emerging Hydrogen Sector

Johanna Schiele is a Policy Officer at the EU Commission, DG CLIMA. She works on designing and implementing EU-wide auctions for renewable hydrogen production at the EU Innovation Fund, under the umbrella of the EU Hydrogen Bank. Previous to joining the Commission, Johanna worked in the power sector and as a researcher on auctions and clean tech funding. She holds a BA from Oxford University and an MPA from Harvard University.

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Before becoming independent, he worked for more than 20 years in the European Commission. In 1999 he joined DG Enterprise and Industry in the sector for technical harmonisation in the Common Market and EN standardisation. In 2003 he was appointed Head of Unit dealing with Entrepreneurship and SME Policy and later Advisor in the same area. In 2016 he became Senior Adviser for Macroregional Strategies the Danube Region, working from Vienna. After returning to Brussels in 2018 he was named Senior Adviser for Advanced Industrial Technologies and Hydrogen Coordinator in DG GROW. Before joining the European Commission, Christian Weinberger worked in the private sector, for 10 years with a large multinational corporation in Marketing, Sales, Finance and Special Business Operations in various countries and at European HQ and then founded an international SME in Information Technology and was its CEO for 10 years. Being a European born in Austria, Christian Weinberger holds a Master of Physics in Engineering, an MBA and a Ph.D. in Economics.

Jorgo Chatzimarkakis is CEO of Hydrogen Europe since 2016. Before he was Representative of Infineon Technologies in Brussels and Member of the European Parliament (2004 - 2014) inter alia in the ITRE Committee (Industry, Technology, Research and Energy) where he could contribute to lay the cornerstone for the first and the second Joint Undertaking on hydrogen and fuel cells. In 2007 he was elected 'MEP of the year' by his colleagues of the European Parliament in the category 'Research and Innovation'. In 2015 he was appointed ambassador at large for Greece. Mr Chatzimarkakis was born in Duisburg, Germany. He holds German and Greek nationality, a degree in political science from the University of Bonn.