THE NETHERLANDS TO CONVERT NATURAL GAS NETWORK FOR PURE HYDROGEN
The Netherlands has shared plans to build a ring shaped pipeline that will be used to supply industrial clusters with hydrogen as a power source. This increase in investment comes after a request from the State Secretary for Energy and Climate, without which investment would remain stagnant.
Gasunie, the natural gas network operator that already operates the 12-km Yara-Dow hydrogen pipeline, commissioned back in 2018, will use its natural gas network and storage facilities in the Netherlands and Germany to develop the Dutch national hydrogen network. The collaboration is part of the Dutch government and Gasunie's “Green Deal on Hydrogen.”
Gasunie says the planned national hydrogen infrastructure will be the first large-scale retrofit of natural gas pipelines, making use of existing pipelines for 85% of the backbone to save substantially on costs. The project, with an estimated price tag of €1.5 billion ($1.77 billion), is scheduled for completion in 2027.
The use of existing infrastructure cannot be used without a few modifications such as cleaning that have additional costs involved, but it is still cheaper to use the existing pipeline then building an entirely new line. The use of the existing pipeline would make the transport of hydrogen more affordable and create the backbone of the hydrogen transportation network across Europe.
