German transmission system operator Gascade and the UK’s National Gas will explore the feasibility of building an offshore pipeline that aims to create a cross-border hydrogen transport link.
The UK-Germany Hydrogen Corridor project will comprise two offshore pipeline sections. The first originating from either Teesside in England or St. Fergus in Scotland, linking to Gascade’s AquaDuctus pipeline in the North Sea, which connects to the German coast.
This will link the high production potential of the UK with rising demand in Germany – one of Europe’s biggest consumers of clean hydrogen.
Although it is suggested that hydrogen will likely flow mainly from the UK to Germany, the pipeline will be technically capable of transporting hydrogen in both directions.
“[This project will allow us to] leverage the UK’s significant renewable resources and Germany’s strategic hydrogen storage and consumption capabilities, diversifying energy imports and strengthening European energy security,” said Ulrich Benterbusch, Managing Director at Gascade.
The desire to strengthen Europe’s energy security was echoed by Jon Butterworth, CEO at National Gas, who called for a “stronger and more resilient energy system that benefits us all.”
The need to diversify energy imports in Europe and especially Germany has been magnified since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, exposing Europe’s reliance on Russian energy.
Having imported more than half of its natural gas from Russia in 2021, Germany was forced to scramble for fresh energy sources. Since then, the country has focused on building and using floating storage and regasification units for LNG imports.
©National Gas
Although Germany was already one of Europe’s earliest proponents of clean hydrogen, having published its National Hydrogen Strategy in mid-2020, the Russia–Ukraine war added greater urgency to the country’s search for viable alternatives to Russian fossil fuels.
The strategy also outlines Germany’s plan to achieve net-zero by 2045, a target that prompted Chancellor Olaf Scholz to call for “a boom in the hydrogen industry.”
“Green hydrogen is the key to decarbonising our economies, especially for hard-to-electrify sectors such as steel production, the chemical industry, heavy shipping and aviation,” he said at the COP27 UN climate change conference in 2022.
The strategy anticipates 50% to 70% of Germany’s expected 95 to 130TWh of 2030 hydrogen demand to be met by imports, amounting to between 1.36 and 2.73 million tonnes per year of low-carbon hydrogen imports.
It expects that this will mainly be brought in as gaseous hydrogen via pipeline, and in the form of derivatives such as ammonia, methanol, and e-fuels.
As of 2025, the UK has approximately two gigawatts of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity either operational or under construction.
It aims to achieve 10GW of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, with at least half derived from green hydrogen produced via electrolysis using renewable energy.
This capacity is expected to yield around 64TWh of hydrogen each year, with an estimated 41.6TWh from blue hydrogen and 22.3TWh from green hydrogen.
