Member-only story
Pipe Dreams: Europe’s Hydrogen Backbone Is Breaking
As Gasunie triples cost estimates and BNEF admits hydrogen won’t be cheap, the case for HVDC keeps getting stronger
The molecules for energy industry has been working hard for years to make it seem as if transporting hydrogen by pipeline is going to be cheap and easy, cheaper and easier than moving electrons in fact. I’ve been tracking this set of bad studies and assessing realities for years.
Three years ago, I published a study funded by European NGOs looking at Europe’s attempts at hydrogen energy colonialism in northern Africa. I assessed the strategies and proposed initiatives in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt. A big part of the plans was to put the hydrogen in the Maghreb–Europe natural gas pipeline, in blended or pure form.
As I noted at the time, repurposing existing natural gas pipelines for hydrogen presents significant technical risks. The metallurgical properties of current pipelines make them vulnerable to microfractures, allowing hydrogen, the smallest molecule, to escape more readily. Leakage concerns are heightened by hydrogen’s 12–37 times greater global warming potential than CO₂, as it’s an indirect greenhouse gas due to slowing the decomposition of methane in the atmosphere. As a note, three years ago we thought…
