Spain abandons the construction of new international interconnections for transport natural gas and will focus its future commitment only on green hydrogen. Up until just two months ago, plans had included trying to recover a new gas pipeline project with France through the Pyrenees (repurchasing the old MidCat) and – as an alternative or supplement – launching an underwater gas pipeline with Italy . Neither one nor the other.
Spain and France have abandoned the revamped MidCat and replaced it with a new corridor that will connect Barcelona and Marseille under the sea with a tube that, from 2030, will only be used to transport green hydrogen. another link is for hydrogen only between Portugal and Spain.
And the Spanish Government is also preparing To definitively bury the ‘megaplan’ to launch an underwater gas pipeline with Italy – between Barcelona and Livorno. which will first be used for the transport of natural gas, then converted into the transport of hydrogen, which has already been studied and shows that 3,000 million will be allocated for its construction.
The executive is diverting its strategy to foreign gas trade and will cease to make any international connections It’s more than just serving natural gas transport to make a full commitment to the future renewable hydrogen revolution, as official sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, led by Vice President Teresa Ribera, confirm.
Spain has gas pipelines connecting its gas system with France, Portugal, Algeria and Moroccoand the Government’s plans not to add a single facility that serves to transport natural gas, but to focus anyway on future green hydrogen plants (which will serve the decarbonisation of sectors that have no CO2 emissions as they are produced using renewable energy). those who find it difficult to electrify, such as large industry and heavy transport).
The Spanish gas industry considers that the new hydroelectric pipeline project with France and the gas pipeline project with Italy are compatible and can be promoted simultaneously, in order to increase its capacity to export natural gas to the rest of Europe, which initially expects green gas from Spain. The hydrogen revolution is becoming a reality. It’s an option that the government has ruled out.
First H2 racer
The commitment to future interconnections is being redirected towards green hydrogen. Spain, France and Portugal are preparing. Europe’s first major green hydrogen corridor with a target to be fully operational by 2030. The ‘megaproject’, stylistically presented by the leaders of the three countries last week, will connect Portugal, Spain and France to the rest of the EU in two different parts, with plans to invest around 2,850m euros (2,500 for 2,500) to get it started. 350 million more for the submarine section between Spain and France and between Portugal and Spain).
H2Med, the christening of the three-nation-led corridor, will be presented to the European Commission by the three countries in the coming days as a candidate for acceptance as a project for common community benefit (PIC) and thus preferred. for European funds that can finance up to half of the total cost of the scheme. For now, Brussels has blessed the project and Commission president Ursula von der Leyen attended the presentation in Alicante, giving the project a real political boost.
H2Med will only serve to transport green hydrogen, not conventional natural gas, even temporarily, as proposed by the three countries until last week. Official sources state that if the aim of the project is to transport hydrogen, the project may only seek European funds to make it viable. European funding for such infrastructure is limited to clean energy and cannot be allocated to natural gas, a hydrocarbon.
Source: Informacion
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