Enagás is promoting various initiatives and projects to adapt its assets and to develop new infrastructure to meet the current and future challenges of the energy transition. One of these is H2med.
H2med will be the first green hydrogen corridor in the European Union, promoted by Enagás together with the TSOs of France (Teréga and GRTgaz), Portugal (REN) and Germany (OGE). This project, scheduled to start in 2030, was included in the final list of European Projects of Common Interest (PCI) in April 2024.
The H2med corridor envisages the creation of two hydrogen infrastructures: CelZa and BarMar.
CelZa is a 248 km interconnection between Portugal and Spain (Celorico da Beira-Zamora) with a maximum capacity of 0.75 million tonnes (Mt) of hydrogen per year. It will also include a 24.6 MW compressor station in Zamora.
BarMar is a 455 km sub-sea pipeline between Spain and France (Barcelona-Marseille) with a maximum capacity of 2 million tonnes (Mt) per year and will include a 140 MW compressor station in Barcelona.
Specifically, H2med will connect hydrogen networks from the Iberian Peninsula to North-West Europe, facilitating the development of a liquid and competitive pan-European market for this energy vector. The project will have the capacity to transport up to 2 million tonnes of green hydrogen produced in Spain and Portugal to other European nations. This represents 10% of the overall consumption target set for Europe.
This project is an example of public-private partnership, as it is supported by the infrastructure operators of four countries and their respective governments. H2med was presented at the Euromed summit in Alicante on 9 December 2022 by the governments of Portugal, Spain and France, with the support of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and in January 2023 the support of Germany was added through its TSO, OGE. In October 2023, the project partners met in Berlin to ratify the support of the governments of these four countries and of the European Commission, as well as that of the industry and the main players in the sector in Germany.
In October 2024, Enagás, GRTgaz, Teréga, REN and OGE jointly submitted their application for funding under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and on 7 November 2024 launched a non-binding Call For Interest process to identify the hydrogen infrastructure needs of the entire hydrogen value chain in Europe. The participation period ended on 18 December 2024 and the results are currently being analysed.
In addition, the preliminary engineering studies and the analysis of alternative routes for the BarMar project corridor are being developed, and the social and economic impact studies and the initial project document prior to the environmental impact assessment are being finalised.
H2med’s driving partners Spain, Portugal, France and Germany have developed ambitious national hydrogen strategies to achieve the common goal of climate neutrality by 2050.
Transmission system operators in these countries are aiming to build national hydrogen transmission and storage infrastructures that will connect consumption and production areas across their territories and allow surplus hydrogen to be exported to other European countries.
Enagás, as provisional manager of the hydrogen network in Spain, has developed a proposal for a hydrogen backbone infrastructure with a 10-year horizon, which it presented to the Directorate General for Energy Policy and Mines of the Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge in April 2024.
It is expected that by 2030 a green energy corridor will be created from south-west to north-west Europe by connecting the Spanish grid with the Portuguese, French and German grids.
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