The EU's first hydrogen pipeline will connect Portugal, Spain and France

The leaders of Spain, Portugal and France unveiled the H2Med energy interconnection project that will supply hydrogen to Europe, formerly known as BarMar, and will be commissioned in 2030, becoming the first green hydrogen link between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe delivery corridor.

Spanish President Sanchez met with French President Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister Costa in Alicante, Spain to discuss the H2Med energy interconnection project - the first green hydrogen transmission corridor connecting the Iberian Peninsula and the French city of Marseille.

The meeting, which included European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, was held at the European Union Intellectual Property Office and was a response to commitments made by the three countries in Brussels in October. The leaders of the three countries agreed to work together to build a transnational hydrogen pipeline.

Sanchez said, "The work of the technical teams in the three countries over the past month has allowed us to propose the goals of H2Med and to clarify that the project has two fundamental parts, namely the pipeline from Portugal to Spain, specifically from Celorico da Beira to Zamora, and The pipeline from Spain to France, from Barcelona through the Mediterranean all the way to Marseille."

According to preliminary technical specifications for the H2Med project, the section between Celorico in Portugal and Zamora in Spain will be 248 kilometers long and is expected to cost 350 million euros ($369.5 million). The 455-kilometer Barcelona-Marseille link is expected to cost as much as 2.5 billion euros.

The project proposed by the leaders of Spain, France and Portugal in Alicante this time will become the first large-scale hydrogen transmission corridor in the European Union. While initially conceived to transport natural gas, it will now be dedicated to green hydrogen only and is therefore part of the RePowerEU programme.

The meeting attended by the president of the European Commission was understood to be supportive of this. H2Med will be proposed as an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) until 15 December 2023, and will enable developers to access funding from European sources such as Connecting Europe which cover 50% of funding for eligible initiatives .

Von der Leyen pointed to the opportune time for the joint project, saying: "The H2MED project is going in the right direction and has the potential to help us create a main network for hydrogen transmission in Europe."

Some of the infrastructure could be up and running by the end of the decade, Sanchez said. He confirms: "By 2030 it will be possible to transport 10% of the EU's hydrogen consumption", equivalent to about 2 million tons per year.

Source: www.pv-magazine.com