The Government dresses the MidCat gas pipeline 'green' to achieve its boost in Brussels

The Government is now making the 'green' flag of

to connect Spain with France and is seeking how to take it to its land of ecological transition.

The solution is to defend that this infrastructure will not only serve to bring more Algerian or North American gas to France, but also green hydrogen, which is proposed as one of the clean solutions to reduce the weight of hydrocarbons in the European energy mix in the coming decades.

According to calculations made by the company

owned and controlled by the State, this infrastructure could supply up to 10% of all the projected consumption of green hydrogen in the European Union in the year 2030. This is a relevant figure, taking into account that Brussels has

its consumption forecast for this fuel to boost its energy independence from Russian gas.

The Government communicates in Brussels that the construction of this infrastructure would be resumed taking into account the hydrogen factor without a large extra cost.

It would be a way, explain sources familiar with the negotiations, to maintain the momentum of the European 'green' race launched before the invasion of Ukraine by resuming the construction of an infrastructure that the

itself rejected until recently.

The MidCat was paralyzed in 2019 after the energy regulators of Spain and France did not consider it relevant in a context of declining gas consumption, which led Brussels to remove it from its list of eligible projects.

But the invasion of Ukraine has changed everything and now the priority in the

is to gradually cut off the relationship of energy dependency with

, and both renewables and green hydrogen itself play a very important role.

The CEO of Enagás,

recalled a few days ago that in a scenario of zero net polluting emissions such as the one that European countries aspire to achieve, "50% of the uses of renewable sources will be in the form of non-electrical final energy ".

Spain wants to take advantage of the new energy context to position itself as the great hydrogen pole at European level, trusting that this will be the energy of the future to the detriment of fossil fuels.

This explains why the Government has allocated the largest of its Pertes to finance its drive with the creation of several production centers spread throughout the national geography.

The country has an extraordinary solar resource capacity used in the electrolysis process to generate this hydrogen from water and has the largest gas infrastructure in Europe.

MidCat would be key to being able to release hydrogen and add value to the rest of the continent, sources close to Enagás explain.

Apart from green hydrogen, the MidCat would double the capacity of the gas interconnection with France, reaching 14 bcm.

This would allow Spain to become a stopcock for Europe for Algerian gas and for all gas that arrives by ship at the Spanish regasification plants.

The problem is that the infrastructure would not be operational in a period of less than three years according to different sources consulted, in such a way that it would not solve the current energy crisis.

In any case, the work would need a coordinated boost from Brussels to iron out the old French reluctance to its construction and the collaboration of the Generalitat de Catalunya to avoid any bureaucratic jam.

The 'president'

himself is favorable to its development by increasing the strategic weight of the region.

However, some experts doubt whether the current energy situation is sufficient to justify an investment of this magnitude in a context of increasing electrification of the economy.

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• Articles Victor Martinez