The “H2MED” or “Barmar” project was launched on Friday during a meeting between French, Portuguese and Spanish leaders. It should cost 2.5 billion euros.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The ambitious hydrogen pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille, officially launched on Friday December 9, will be operational in 2030, said French president Emmanuel Macron after a meeting with the heads of Spanish and Portuguese government, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Costa, in Alicante, in southeast Spain.
Its cost should “be around 2.5 billion euros,” said Sánchez, who said this pipe would carry some two million tonnes of hydrogen per year, or 10 % of European consumption provided on this date.
This underwater pipeline should make it possible to transport “green” hydrogen – made from renewable electricity – from the Iberian peninsula, which aims to become a champion of this energy of the future, towards the North from the European Union (EU) via France. Paris did not exclude that it also transports hydrogen produced from nuclear.
called “H2Med” or “Barmar” (contraction of Barcelona and Marseille, the two cities connected by this pipe), this project replaces the “Midcat”, launched in 2003 to connect French and Spanish gas networks via the Pyrenees, Finally abandoned due to its lack of economic interest, the opposition of environmentalists and that of Paris.
The issue of European financing
It will be submitted in the coming days to the European Commission in order to benefit from the status of “project of common interest” and be funded in part by European funds, added Macron. Present at the meeting between the three leaders, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “warmly praised” the launch of this project, which will help the EU “build a real European hydrogen backbone “.
Thought at the start to temporarily transport gas from the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of the EU in order to reduce dependence on Russian gas, the H2MED will ultimately serve only to transport hydrogen, said Antonio Costa.
This choice not to transport fossil energy was necessary in order to ensure that Brussels can declare it “project of common interest”. Paris, Madrid and Lisbon hope a response from the Commission in early 2023. European funding could reach around half of the cost, or 1.2 billion euros, according to a French source, the rest being mainly in charge, according to proportions and mechanisms to be defined, future consumers of the hydrogen transported.
Three traces are envisaged, the most likely taking place over a length of 455 km and a maximum underwater depth of 2,557 meters. Technical, environmental and financial studies must make it possible to validate this choice or to fall back on one of the other two tracks.
This meeting was held before a summit of the EU Med, forum of the countries of southern Europe, also including Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Slovenia, which was in particular devoted to questions of economic and energy sovereignty.
At the end of this summit, Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez announced that the next bilateral summit between their two countries would take place on January 19 in Spain.