October 23, 2024 [Oil Price]- Germany’s government has approved plans for the development of a hydrogen network that would cost 19 billion euros, equivalent to $20.5 billion.

The plan would include converting natural gas pipelines into infrastructure for the transportation of hydrogen, building new pipelines as well, and connecting them all with big industrial energy consumers to help them decarbonize, Bloomberg reports.

The natural gas pipeline conversion would cost some 2 billion euros, the report notes. The whole network would span over 9,000 kilometers and be completed by 2032, with the first pipelines going online in 2025.

Germany has already signaled previously it has big ambitions in the hydrogen space, and more specifically in the green hydrogen space. However, that very same space has seen several project cancellations recently as their authors conclude the market conditions are not conducive to the success of these projects.

Denmark’s Orsted said earlier this month it would abandon a project that was supposed to produce green hydrogen from wind power installations, saying that “a sub-scale demonstration plant like this no longer has a relevance in the current market.”

Spain’s Repsol just this week said it would suspend all investments in green hydrogen in its home market as it braces up for the possibility of windfall taxes for the energy industry becoming a permanent fixture of the local regulatory landscape. The company warned that tax would discourage investments in the nascent green hydrogen market.

Green hydrogen is the cleanest form of the element and an energy source that many transition advocates are placing great value on. However, it is an expensive process that involves considerable energy losses during the conversion of water into its constituent elements, prompting ample criticism that appears to have gone unheeded in Berlin. Germany plans to become climate-neutral by 2045.

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