German transmission system operators (TSOs) are touting strong early demand for the country’s planned 9,000km hydrogen pipeline network after launching a reservation phase in March.
The group which includes Creos, Fluxys Deutschland, Gascade, Gasunie, Thyssengass, and others, said 32 reservation requests had been submitted, with “most” receiving a reservation offer.
According to the group, hydrogen input and output capacities of up to around 2.9GW have been requested in cluster regions where production and end use are planned. Around 600MW has been requested for “cross-cluster transport.”
The reservation phase is seen as an early test of whether industrial users are willing to commit to hydrogen transport infrastructure ahead of large-scale supply availability.
Barbara Fischer, Managing Director of gas pipeline operators association FNB, said the demand showed the importance of the network for Germany’s hydrogen ramp-up.
However, the early reservation volumes remain small relative to the system’s long-term ambitions.
By 2032, is due to have a feed-in capacity of 101GW and offtake capacity of 87GW – a scale the German government said would allow for “reliable planning” from producers and end-users.
Construction and conversion work on the network is , with TSOs repurposing sections of existing natural gas pipelines to carry hydrogen.
In 2024, state-owned bank KfW signed a to finance the cost of the network.
The funds will sit in an amortisation account designed to compensate TSOs for expected low early-stage network revenues. If the account has not been repaid by 2055, the German government will cover the remaining balance.
Earlier this month, think tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) warned that weaker-than-expected hydrogen uptake could require Germany to provide an in public funding by 2055, largely due to the hydrogen network.
While publicly framed as a €19.8bn ($23.3bn) project, IEEFA said the network’s regulated cost base could exceed €50bn ($58.7bn) once financing, maintenance, and repurposed assets are included.
“The network shouldn’t be built on the assumption that policy will later create enough demand to justify [investments],” Alasdair Docherty, IEEFA analyst told H2 View. “That’s a one-way path to fiscal risk.”
German policymakers and network operators maintain that building infrastructure ahead of demand is necessary to create investment certainty for producers, industrial users and import projects, even if utilisation remains low in the early years.
