"There is no liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world to replace the natural gas that came by tube from Russia." This was the harsh reality that the war in Ukraine triggered in the offices of European leaders, according to Luis Atienza, former president of REE and energy expert. Security of energy supply could no longer be jeopardized. The alternative? green hydrogen.
A gas that, until the outbreak of the war, Europe and the rest of the world had considered as a long-term alternative for the decarbonization of sectors with high energy needs where electricity does not reach.
After February 24, 2022, green hydrogen went from being that promise to being the need with which Europe aspires to end energy dependence. This is recognized by the RePower EU, the document on measures to deal with the war that the European Union published in May. In it, he set the goal of achieving a production of 10 tons of green hydrogen from European production and another 10 imported before 2030.
Stratospheric figures for a technology that has not yet managed to demonstrate its economic viability, but whose promise for the future has unleashed an investment fever. “Hydrogen has an uncertain present and a promising future. A lot of bubble has been created around this and the success of transporting it remains to be seen,” said José Bogas, CEO of Endesa, last Friday.
Despite this prudence, neither governments nor the majority of large companies are willing to be late in this business. "Spain has a lot of territory for all the renewable energy that will demand the production of hydrogen at a much more competitive price than any other country in Europe," explains Joaquín Rodríguez, director of Hydrogen at Cepsa. The company, which has million-dollar investments in Spain, has already announced the first corridor by ship to bring hydrogen produced in the country to the port of Rotterdam for distribution in northern Europe. It is just one of the thousands of projects on the table. 40% of the 5,200 MW in hydrogen projects that were announced throughout Europe until last summer are located in Spain, according to data collected by Bank of America. Some as high-profile as the 10,000 million from the Maersk shipping company, which has chosen Spain as one of its five strategic points in the world to produce green fuels.
On the public side, the Spanish bet is not the result of the war, although as for the rest of the renewables the conflict has fueled it. The hydrogen roadmap that was committed to this energy vector was already published in 2020. Two years later, the objective of producing 2GW to 4GW in 2030 has been redoubled. But, above all, it has opted to consolidate Spain as a strategic supplier for the whole of Europe with the presentation of a strategic infrastructure. It is the H2Med, an underwater hydroduct (the first in the world) that connects the Iberian Peninsula with France to become a strategic supplier of hydrogen for the needy heavy industry in central Europe. There are 2,500 million investment, to which another 4,500 are added to develop the trunk network within Spain. The Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, announced last Friday another 150 million to promote all kinds of projects.
