[Video] A look back at... five regions working together to promote hydrogen
Five large regions of France (Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, Occitanie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Grand Est) took a major step forward in their energy transition by signing a joint declaration in support of the HY-FEN project on 1 July at the Journées Hydrogène dans les Territoires [”Hydrogen in the Regions”] event in Lyon.
More than 800 km long, this future hydrogen infrastructure, supported by NaTran, aims to supply France from south to north, from the Bouches-du-Rhône to Moselle. It would connect producers, industrial consumers and storage operators at the heart of France’s major industrial areas, such as the Chemicals Valley, the industrial port zones of Fos-sur-Mer, Dunkirk, Moselle and the Seine Valley.
More broadly, the HY-FEN project is part of the H2Med transnational initiative, which aims to interconnect hydrogen networks from the Iberian Peninsula to north-western Europe, involving Portugal, Spain, France and Germany. Last February, nearly 170 companies (Portuguese, Spanish, German and French) responded to the call for expressions of interest launched by the H2Med project’s promoters, and more than 500 projects were declared, demonstrating strong interest in the proposed infrastructure and confirming H2med’s role in helping European players achieve their decarbonisation and reindustrialisation objectives.
From this point of view, HY-FEN is an essential milestone in the construction of an integrated hydrogen market at European level, which was called for by the European Commission.
As a Franco-German Council of Ministers is being held on Friday 29 August, last spring French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed their desire to make effective investments in key networks, particularly in energy infrastructure.
