Europe launches its Underwater Hydrogen Highway

Europe launches its Underwater Hydrogen Highway

The H2Med pipeline is part of the project to accelerate the decarbonization of European industry (here the Total-Elf-BP-Naphta Chimie petrochemical complex in Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille). ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP

France, Spain and Portugal are backing an unprecedented underwater tube project that will supply Marseille.

The Élysée called again on Thursday for the BarMar project for Barcelona-Marseille. To be associated with Portugal and Spain it is now appropriate to speak of H2Med. The meeting of Emmanuel Macron and the Spanish and Portuguese leaders Pedro Sanchez and Antonio Costa this Friday in Alicante, Spain, as part of the ninth summit of the nine southern countries of the European Union, must give political impetus to this unprecedented project gas pipeline. A tube that, if built, will transport not natural gas but hydrogen from Barcelona to Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille. Working underwater would be a world first.

This “hydroduct,” as the Ministry for Energy Transition calls it, was announced on October 20 on the sidelines of a European summit. At that time, Paris had obtained from Madrid and Berlin the abandonment of the MidCat gas pipeline project that the two capitals had been promoting. Intending to ship natural gas imported from the United States or Qatar through Spanish terminals to…

This article is for subscribers only. You still have 79% to discover.

Cultivating your freedom means cultivating your curiosity.

Continue reading your article for €0.99 for the first month

Already subscribed? registration