The CEO, Arturo Gonzalo, announced during the opening of the Enagás H₂ Technical Day, held at the Espacio Bertelsmann in Madrid, the creation of a H₂ Technology Observatory “to promote, delve further into and share technical advances in the field of renewable H₂.”

Arturo Gonzalo stressed the importance of the technology “in view of the imminent development of a H₂ market in Europe,” and added that “the H₂ Technology Observatory will be a meeting point open to the main agents in the H₂ value chain,” describing the ‘Enagás H₂ Technical Day’ as “the cornerstone” of this forum.

This event, promoted by Enagás, follows the meeting in Madrid of the participants in the H₂ gas assets readiness (H2GAR) project for the technological development of H₂ transport, made up of seven European Transmission System Operators: Fluxys, Gasunie, GRTGaz, National Grid, OGE, Snam and Enagás.

The CEO of Enagás pointed out that “the development of renewable H₂ is perfectly viable technologically”, with scaling challenges in areas such as the material of the hydroproducts, instrumentation, compressors, storage in salt caverns, adaptation of existing networks, design of the dedicated network, maintenance, metering and digitalization. “H₂ has been transported through pipelines since 1938”, so “the technology is proven and now the challenge is to scale it up”, he added.

The context is favorable for this scaling up, and in this sense, Arturo Gonzalo explained that “Europe is clear and is ramping up its ambition”, and said that, if by 2030 the European REPowerEU plan sets green H₂ consumption at 20 MMt, with half of it produced in Europe, the European Commission is already suggesting that by 2040 EU production will reach 35 MMt−40 MMt.

On this path, Europe is advancing at an unprecedented pace with milestones such as the approval of the European H₂ and Decarbonized Gas Markets Directive and the inclusion, for the first time, of H₂ projects in the European list of Projects of Common Interest (PCIs), published yesterday in the journal of the European Union (OJEU).

In addition, Spain is playing a leading role with an Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) and the designation of Enagás as Provisional Operator of the Spanish H₂ Backbone. The estimated investment in Spain for this backbone and for the European H2Med interconnector is €5.9 B.