General – Hydrogen Pipeline
Spain, France and Portugal have agreed to build a major undersea pipeline to transport hydrogen from the Iberian Peninsula to France and Europe by 2030.
The pipeline is aimed at making the European Union’s energy supply more independent, a goal expedited by the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February that precipitated an energy crisis.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the pipeline, dubbed H2Med, will be able to convey some 2 million metric tons of hydrogen to France annually — 10% of the EU´s estimated hydrogen needs. The project is expected to cost 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion).
The announcement came after a meeting between Sánchez, his French and Portuguese counterparts and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the eastern Spanish city of Alicante.
“Today, the Iberian Peninsula is becoming a major European energy gateway to the world,” Von der Leyen said at a joint press briefing.
French President Emmanuel Macron said H2Med, which replaces an earlier proposal to transport gas across the Pyrenees Mountains, will “take a new path through the Mediterranean and rely on a technology of the future, which is hydrogen.”
“It will also probably allow later other European interconnections toward some other countries which will want to get that hydrogen,” he added.
“We are strengthening European Union’s strategic autonomy and energy security at a moment when solidarity among Europeans is essential to reduce energy dependency on countries that use energy as a blackmailing tool,” Sánchez said, in reference to Russia and the gas crisis that has emerged since the war in Ukraine.
