Germany to Develop Hydrogen Pipeline

German transmission system operator (TSO) Open Grid Europe (OGE) has teamed up with other energy companies to supply hydrogen to industrial consumers in northwest Germany starting in late 2022, it said on March 17.

OGE said it had signed a memorandum of understanding on developing the project, named GET H2 Nukleus, with BP, German electrical firm RWE Generation, chemical company Evonik and fellow TSO Nowega. The pipeline will be supplied with green hydrogen produced from renewable energy at a 100-MW electrolyser owned by RWE. The fuel will be delivered to industrial customers and refiners in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The group will grant third parties access to the system, which will make use of existing but underused natural gas pipelines that have been converted for hydrogen flow.

Germany is looking at options for deploying hydrogen on a commercial scale. While gas producers have lobbied for the use of blue hydrogen, which can be produced from gas using environmentally friendly methods such as methane pyrolysis, the government intends to include only green hydrogen derived from renewables in a package of incentives it plans to introduce, according to a draft document seen by Bloomberg earlier this month.

OGE is involved in plans to build another hydrogen plant with German TSO Amprion. The Netherlands' Gasunie, Germany's Thyssengas and Dutch-German operator TenneT are also working on a similar project.