Norway's Equinor cancels plans to export Blue Hydrogen to Germany

A spokesperson for Equinor, the Norwegian energy company, said that it has scrapped plans to export blue hydrogen into Germany due to its high cost and insufficient demand.

In January 2022 Equinor signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Germany's RWE to create a hydrogen supply network for German power plants in order to reduce emissions.

Plans included producing blue hydrogen (hydrogen from natural gas combined with CCS) in Norway, and exporting that to gas-powered power plants in Germany using the first offshore hydrogen pipe.

The hydrogen pipeline has not proven to be viable. Magnus Frantzen Eidsvold, Equinor spokesperson, said that the hydrogen production plans were also put on hold.

He added, "We have decided that we will discontinue the early phase of this project."

RWE was not available for immediate comment.

The CEO of Equinor, Anders Opedal, said last year that the costs of the entire supply chain could reach "tens" of billions of euros. He also stated that the cost for the pipeline would be around 3 billion euro ($3.35 billion).

Eidsvold stated that Equinor could not continue to develop the projects without long-term commitments by European buyers of hydrogen.

Eidsvold stated that "we are not able make such investments without long-term contracts and markets in place."

Eidsvold stated that plans to develop hydrogen-ready power plants for gas in Germany will proceed, but hydrogen will be purchased on the continent and not imported from Norway.

He added that Equinor would continue to pursue other early-phase hydrogen projects in the UK and Netherlands. ($1 = $0.8955 euros) Reporting by Nerijus Adomiaitis, Editing by Susan Fenton

(source: Reuters)