The ambitious “green” hydrogen pipeline project between Barcelona and Marseille H2Med, officially launched on Friday in Alicante (Spain), will be operational in 2030 and will cost around 2.5 billion euros, the French and Spanish leaders have announced.
This project must be “completed in 2030”, declared the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after a meeting with the heads of government of Spain and Portugal, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Costa.
For his part, Sánchez indicated that the construction cost of H2Med should be “approximately 2,500 million euros”. This pipeline will transport some two million tons of hydrogen a year by 2030, he also specified.
Hydrogen made from green electricity
This project will be submitted before December 15 to the European Commission in order to benefit from the status of “project of common interest” and therefore from European funding, added Mr. Macron.
Present at the meeting between the Spanish, French and Portuguese leaders, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has “welcomed with great satisfaction” this agreement between the three countries, which “goes in the right direction”.
This submarine gas pipeline should allow the so-called “green” hydrogen -because it is manufactured from renewable electricity- to be transported from the Iberian Peninsula, which aspires to become a champion of this energy of the future, to France and the north of the EU.
This project replaces the “MidCat”, launched in 2003 to connect the gas networks of France and Spain through the Pyrenees, but finally abandoned due to its lack of economic interest, opposition from environmentalists and from Paris.
Source: BFM TV
