With its 2,500 million euro investment, the H2Med, the underwater hydroduct (the first in the world) that must transport hydrogen from the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of Europe, is a project as pharaonic as it is controversial. While its supporters see it as a project of community interest and essential for the decarbonization of energy, Greenpeace and the Renewable Foundation have presented a joint document in which they warn that its construction “responds more to the demand of the gas sector than to the real interests of society.
“The Government of Spain is erroneously betting on turning us into a hydrogen hub, in which to make a bet on the overproduction of renewable electricity in order to produce and export hydrogen,” said Fernando Ferrando, president of the Renewables Foundation, at the Presentation of the report Disassembling hydrogen: H2Med, an alibi for a false energy transition.
Pere Margalef, director of hydrogen technology at the Italian energy infrastructure operator Snam, doubts that “Spain may be able to generate enough electricity from renewable sources to supply the national electricity market, produce hydrogen for self-consumption and, in addition , produce hydrogen for export”. In this sense, Greenpeace and the Renewables Foundation fear that the H2Med will end up transporting hydrogen produced from natural or nuclear gas, two energy sources considered green by European taxonomy.
On the other side of the scale is Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association (AeH2). Brey states that “it has been calculated that Spain does have enough potential to supply the domestic market and, at the same time, be able to produce hydrogen from renewable electricity for export.” In addition, the president of AeH2 points out the opportunity that H2Med represents by turning Spain into the European entry point for hydrogen from Africa and South America. In fact, the announcement by Greenpeace and the Renewables Foundation coincided with the celebration in Barcelona of the first edition of the North Africa and Europe Hydrogen and Energy Fair (North Africa
Referring to the demand for hydrogen, José Luis García, head of the Climate, Energy and Mobility area of ??Greenpeace, assured that “H2Med is based on the creation of an artificial supply, much higher than the current or future demand for hydrogen because The use of this energy vector must be limited to all those energy uses that cannot be electrified”.
This last point, the important role of hydrogen in the decarbonization of industry and maritime and air transport, is the only one on which opponents and supporters of the H2Med hydroduct agree. However, there is still a long way to go before hydrogen produced from electricity from renewable sources is competitive with hydrogen produced from natural gas, which continues to be the majority. On the other hand, hydrogen produced with renewables has another drawback: for every kilogram of hydrogen, 12 kg of water is required (9 kg of pure water and 3 kg that is discarded). In Margalef’s opinion, thanks to desalination, the use of water is not a problem. For his part, Brey points out that “with less than 2% of the drinking water lost in the national water distribution network, it would be enough to produce all the hydrogen foreseen in the current hydrogen roadmap for 2013.”
