German state Saxony and neighbour Czechia agree joint infrastructure for hydrogen imports

Czechia and eastern German state Saxony have agreed to deepen their cooperation on a joint network for hydrogen and to generally intensify research and industry exchange in the budding industry. Czechia’s industry minister, Jozef Sikela, and Saxony’s economy minister, Martin Dulig, signed a letter of intent on the subject. Both sides said that a first step of the cooperation would include converting existing gas infrastructure to hydrogen. By the end of the decade, this would open the path for a supply with “large quantities” of hydrogen from eastern and southern Europe at low costs through Czechia’s grid in central Europe. Economy minister Dulig said Saxony’s steel and chemistry industry, as well as new investments in microelectronics, would soon increase their demand for the climate neutral fuel. Together with Czechia, which besides Poland is the state’s most important European trading partner, “we will work towards freeing our energy supply from one-sided dependencies,” Dulig said. Czech minister Sikela said both Saxony and his country lacked sufficient natural resources to supply their highly developed industries. “A good way to solve this is importing hydrogen from places with a surplus in renewable energy,” Sikela said, adding that both sides had already cooperated on hydrogen-powered trains. “This shows the direction that our cooperation on hydrogen imports will take.”

With several projects linked to the so-called European Hydrogen Backbone initiative, Germany is seeking to integrate its upcoming hydrogen infrastructure into a wider European network from early on. Production of green hydrogen in the country will not be financially viable in the long term, a report by the European Commission found. France and Spain would become Europe's most important hydrogen producers because they have more favourable conditions for renewable energy generation, according to the authors. But cooperation is also being intensified with other states in Europe and beyond, as demand for the climate neutral fuel, which is instrumental for cleaning up some of most stubborn sources of emissions, is set to grow rapidly in the next years.