On Thursday 30 May, Germany, Austria and Italy signed a Joint Declaration of Intent in Brussels to accelerate establishment of a hydrogen corridor connecting the three countries, they announced in a press statement. This announcement follows on from the trilateral Berlin-Vienna-Rome multilateral working group set up last year.
The Southern Hydrogen Corridor, as it is known, has already been selected at EU level as a Project of Common Interest (PCI). It aims to enhance energy security for the respective countries’ main industrial demand clusters while supporting the EU’s climate objectives.
The project responds to the need for a European transition to hydrogen technologies to decarbonise certain hard-to-abate sectors and is one of the five large-scale pipeline hydrogen import corridors to realise the import of 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen by 2030.
“Austria has pushed this issue forward intensively, because green hydrogen is extremely important for our industry”, explained Leonore Gewessler, the Austrian Minister for Climate Action and Energy, in the margins of the Energy Council.
Robert Habeck, German’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, said that “the development of a functioning hydrogen market in the EU is a guarantee for accelerating the energy transition”. This is “an important project for our countries, for Europe and for Africa”, said Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, Italy’s Minister for Environment and Energy Security.
Link to the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/cg4 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Pauline Denys)