The war in Ukraine has turned the geopolitical energy balance upside down and Spain is in a privileged situation, agreed the Chairman of Enagás, Antonio Llardén, and the Chairman of Redeia, Beatriz Corredor, during a cycle on the energy crisis in Europe held yesterday in the Circle of Economy. In this new context, Llardén highlighted that the H2Med, which will transport green hydrogen between Spain and France, will promote the country as an energy power and will be key to meeting the decarbonisation objectives set by the EU. Hydrogen consumption in Spain could reach one million tons by 2030, continued Llardén.
The country would also have the capacity to export between half a million and one million of this material through H2Med that year, which, together with the planned production in Portugal, would allow two million tons of green hydrogen to be transported from Spain per year. It is estimated that this quantity represents 10% of the total green hydrogen consumed by the EU. In 2050 it is expected that 20% of all energy in Europe will be renewable hydrogen. The interconnection of the H2Med between Barcelona and Marseille “makes perfect sense”, defended Llardén.
However, the manager in turn called for a technological and scale effort to make green hydrogen cheaper, since now its price is excessive. This renewable energy source is three times more expensive than gray hydrogen – he remarked – so “the fundamental challenge is price”. The new generation of electrolyzers being researched today could lower the price, he said.
For his part, Corredor focused on the regulation that should lead to the increase in production and use of green hydrogen. Thus, he stressed that one of the problems of this is “the final destination, what do you use it for”, and that small and medium-sized electricity producers do not have the economic capacity to have an electrolyzate, with which electricity is used to generate hydrogen.
In this sense, he explained that Red Eléctrica –one of Redeia’s subsidiaries– can only make investments in neutral electrical infrastructures and that having a neutral electrolyser to serve these producers would be an option so that they can use surplus electricity from sources renewable.
In any case, this option still needs to be regulated, Corredor pointed out, for which reason he asked that regulations be created on issues such as offshore energy or batteries. “The entire sector needs regulation because there is a lot of investment that is pending” that there is legal certainty, he concluded.
During the debate, which was moderated by the vice president of the Cercle, Teresa Garcia-Milà, both Llardén and Corredor defended a change in the electricity pricing mechanism such as the one being studied by the EU, based on the Iberian exception promoted by Spain.
