Baltic Sea states eyeing hydrogen infrastructure from Finland to Germany

TALLINN – The transmission system operators of six Baltic Sea countries signed a cooperation agreement on Wednesday to develop hydrogen infrastructure from Finland through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to Germany to meet the REPowerEU 2030 targets.

The agreement on the cross-border project, titled "Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor," was signed by Gasgrid Finland, Estonian TSO Elering, Latvian TSO Conexus Baltic Grid, Amber Grid of Lithuania, GAZ-SYSTEM of Poland and ONTRAS of Germany, Elering said in a press release on Friday. 

The project would strengthen the region's energy security, reduce the dependency of imported fossil energy and play a prominent role in decarbonizing societies and energy-intensive industries along the corridor.

Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor supports diversification of energy supplies, and accelerated roll-out of renewable energy, allowing in particular for achieving the EU target of 10 million tons of domestic renewable hydrogen production by 2030. The corridor can transport green hydrogen produced in the Baltic Sea area to supply consumption points and industrial clusters along the whole corridor, as well as in central Europe.

The development of hydrogen infrastructure should also help to build a single market for hydrogen, which will ensure good access to hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources for businesses in Baltic Sea states.

Taking into account the complexity of the project, the project partners will take proactive steps toward project implementation. In 2023, during the first phase of the project development, the project partners will conduct a pre-feasibility study. Based on the pre-feasibility study recommendations, a decision on continuation of the project development would be made.

The project strongly supports the EU hydrogen strategy and REPowerEU plan. In addition, the Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor will support several regional and EU climate targets.