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EU split over hydrogen transport.

 

hydrogen transport

Ambitious plans to build a €2.5bn undersea hydrogen pipeline between Spain and France are exposing divisions over the best way to transport energy from southern Europe to the continent’s northern industrial heartland. Green hydrogen’s potential is unproven as it is not yet produced commercially. However, it struck a deal with the port of Rotterdam in September to create a «green hydrogen corridor» to bring the fuel from Spain to northern Europe. Initially, from 2027, the corridor will be a shipping route as Cepsa plans to convert green hydrogen into ammonia and then transport it by boat from the Spanish port of Algeciras.
The green hydrogen will come from planned Cepsa plants in Campo de Gibraltar and Palos de la Frontera that will produce up to 300,000 tonnes of fuel a year. The EU aims to produce 10mn tonnes of renewable hydrogen by 2030 and match it with the same volume of imports, according to plans for REPowerEU, an energy transition fund. Iberdrola, Spain’s biggest energy company, is also investing in hydrogen production but has taken an opposing position on the undersea pipeline. «The most efficient way to produce hydrogen is local, transporting the green electricity needed to make it from elsewhere, if necessary,» said Ignacio Galán, executive chair.

The argument against hydrogen pipelines is that they would cost more than natural gas pipelines and entail significant engineering challenges because the technology for long-distance transportation of the fuel, which is highly flammable, does not yet exist. Iberdrola’s investments assume that heavy industry will use hydrogen near where it is made. The installation in Puertollano, Castile-La Mancha, includes a 100MW solar array that powers an electrolyser to separate hydrogen from water, then sends it to an adjacent plant where another company, Fertiberia, uses it to make fertiliser. For Germany, Iberdrola’s vision dictates that the best way to secure hydrogen supplies would be to produce the fuel using electricity generated by renewables.

Another sceptic on long-distance hydrogen exports is Lluís Noguera, chief executive of X-Elio, one of Spain’s longest-standing solar power developers. He believes renewable power is vital in producing hydrogen but says insufficient space to build power generation facilities for electrolysers is available next to most steel and cement plants or refineries. Noguera said electricity should be produced where the sun shone and then sent via the grid to industrial sites so «the renewable power comes from where it makes sense to produce it, and the hydrogen comes from where it makes sense to consume it». Hydrogen export advocates say it would be cheaper to move hydrogen than electricity.

It would cost €5/MWh to transport the gas in a 1,000km pipeline against €12/MWh to send the equivalent electricity via an overhead AC power line, according to the European Hydrogen Backbone, a group of pro-pipeline energy operators. They also say more energy is lost in transmitting electricity than piping hydrogen. Wetselaar said the main flaw in the argument for exporting electricity was that Europe’s grid was «undersized» and looked set to remain so. As a result, it would not be able to transport much power to produce hydrogen, especially once the demand for electric vehicles accelerated. Moreover, securing approval for high-voltage cables was much more challenging than for underground pipelines.

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