Norway's state-owned energy group Equinor has cancelled its plans to develop a 2.6 Mt/year hydrogen pipeline to export "blue hydrogen" (produced from natural gas and coupled with carbon capture and storage) from Norway to Germany due to a lack a viable business case. Indeed, the hydrogen supply chain construction would have represented an investment of “tens of billion euros”, with the pipeline itself costing between €4bn-6bn, and Equinor had received no firm long-term engagement from the market.
The Norwegian company will continue with the plans to build hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants in Germany along with RWE, but with hydrogen being sourced elsewhere. RWE expects hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants to start production in 2030 at the earliest, provided the German government approves a support regime for such plants.
In January 2023, Equinor and RWE signed a MoU to work together to develop large-scale value chains for low carbon hydrogen in Germany and Norway, to help replace coal-fired power from Germany’s power mix.