Spain’s Nortegas to blend green hydrogen

(Image: Nortegas.)

Nortegas, Spain’s second-largest natural gas distribution company, plans to blend hydrogen in increasing amounts into its residential and industrial network. The intent of the H2SAREA project, as it is known, is to analyze the limits of the infrastructure and equipment the company uses to distribute natural gas, the company said.

The project will develop new technological solutions to be adopted to the energy needs of the future hydrogen economy, the company said.

The project is designed to enable the future use and transformation of the current natural gas network, as part of the most efficient solution in the development of the hydrogen economy.

The results of this project will be used to propose the following steps and specific proposals, based on real experiences, to the different regulatory authorities for the transformation to begin.

“H2SAREA is part of the energy transformation that we are facing. Nortegas is thus researching and developing new technological solutions that are going to allow us to adapt our infrastructures to the energy needs of the immediate future, in other words, green hydrogen,” said Nortegas CEO Iñaki Alzaga, Nortegas.

José Ignacio Zudaire, chair of the Basque Hydrogen Corridor, said Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has sped up the energy transition. “As Europeans, our primary goal continues to be decarbonisation, as the basic vehicle to fight against climate change, but with our sights set on another of the pillars, security of supply, which could be said to have been rather overlooked in recent times,” he said.

The decarbonization effort will require an investment of over €1.3 billion through 2026 and the forecast is to generate over 1,340 direct and 6.700 indirect jobs, the company said.

This project is run by a consortium of Basque industries, such as ABC Compresores, FIDEGAS, H2Site, Erreka Fastening Solutions and Orkli. It also has the backing of two of the main technology centres of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network – Tecnalia and Ikerlan – and of the National Hydrogen Centre, the company said.

H2SAREA seeks to analyse the performance of both residential and industrial infrastructures and equipment that current use natural gas, once it is mixed in different increasing percentages with hydrogen.