Belgium will launch a call for projects worth 10 million euros next month to support the import of green hydrogen into ports. Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen) reports this.

Belgium has ambitious plans for hydrogen. Besides making the country a leader in hydrogen technologies, Belgium also wants to be an import and transit hub for hydrogen in the European tradition, moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy. “If we want to anchor the industry, we need to accelerate our strategy,” said Van der Straeten.

Port of Antwerp

The ‘H2 Import Call’ project serves to kickstart the development of hydrogen import infrastructure at ports in the North Sea. Energy giant TotalEnergies, for example, recently announced its ambition to buy 500 000 tons of green hydrogen a year by 2030 to decarbonize its six European refineries, i.e., reduce CO2 emissions. The company plans to buy most of the volume for its refinery at the port of Antwerp.

Green hydrogen is produced from renewable sources like solar panels or wind turbines. Production is cheapest in countries with huge potential, such as Southern Europe (mainly Iberia), the Middle East, and Africa (Belgium already has hydrogen import agreements with Oman and Namibia). Still, you must be able to import it.

Network

With the project call, the Minister wants to facilitate TotalEnergies’ ambitious plans. Indeed, since adopting the hydrogen strategy, followed in July of this year with the first Belgian hydrogen law regulating hydrogen transport via pipelines, Belgium has had a favorable framework for hydrogen imports.

Belgium is also set to commission 150 km of hydrogen pipelines by 2026. Two years later, the connection to Germany should be a reality, linking ports to the Ruhr region.

Belgium will thus not only import significant quantities of renewable H2 molecules and H2 derivatives (20 TWh in 2030 and between 200 and 300 TWh in 2050) to cover its domestic demand, but it also wants to act as a transit hub for neighboring countries.

At the same time, the hydrogen transport network is being developed in and between the industrial clusters of Ghent, Antwerp, Mons, Charleroi, and Liège. The federal government has released 250 million euros to create that hydrogen transport network.

The federal government is also financing the HyBEX project, which analyses establishing a market for the purchase and sale of hydrogen in Belgium.

One network operator

In principle, a ‘hydrogen network operator’ would be appointed in Belgium before the end of the year. The intention is to designate one grid operator, like gas operator Fluxys or electricity operator Elia, for hydrogen transport.

The Fluxys group, which is controlled by the Belgian municipalities (Publics), is known to want to use its experience in gas grid management in green hydrogen distribution as well.

Belgium currently has 600 km of pipelines in its hydrogen transmission network. However, the Flemish government believes that hydrogen is mainly a Flemish competence.

According to Flanders, the federal government is only competent for large-scale transport and imports. Therefore, Flanders is asking for the annulment of the federal hydrogen law before the Constitutional Court, also because it is working on a decree to regulate the distribution of hydrogen at a regional level, calibrated to the distribution of electricity and natural gas.