Germany is converting its entire natural gas grid into a hydrogen backbone — 9,700 kilometres of pipe that will carry the fuel of the future through the infrastructure of the past.

 

Germany is converting its entire natural gas grid into a hydrogen backbone — 9,700 kilometres of pipe that will carry the fuel of the future through the infrastructure of the past.

Germany operates one of the most extensive natural gas pipeline networks in the world — 550,000 kilometres of pipe from high-pressure transmission mains to distribution networks serving every home and factory. That infrastructure was built over a century for one purpose: carrying methane. Beginning in 2025, the Wasserstoff-Kernnetz — Germany's hydrogen core network — will start converting the highest-pressure section of this system to carry hydrogen instead, creating a 9,700-kilometre dedicated hydrogen transmission backbone connecting Germany's industrial clusters from the Ruhr to Hamburg to Bavaria.

Approximately 60% of the new hydrogen grid will use converted existing gas pipelines — assessed, tested, and approved for hydrogen service by the German gas grid operators. The remaining 40% will be newly constructed where routing or pipeline condition makes conversion impractical. The network will connect industrial consumers — ThyssenKrupp's Duisburg steel plant, BASF's Ludwigshafen chemical complex, glass manufacturers in Bavaria, ammonia plants across the country — to green hydrogen produced from North Sea wind in northern Germany and to import terminals at Hamburg, Bremen, and Wilhelmshaven where hydrogen from Norway, North Africa, and the Gulf will arrive.

The industries this network targets are Germany's most carbon-intensive and most difficult to decarbonise by any other means. Steel, chemicals, cement, and fertiliser production require high-temperature heat that electricity alone cannot economically deliver at current technology costs. Hydrogen is the only molecule that can replace the natural gas these industries currently burn without replacing their entire process equipment. Germany is building the pipe before the hydrogen is fully available — because infrastructure built too late is infrastructure that fails its entire purpose.

Source: Federal Network Agency Germany — Hydrogen Core Network Final Plan and Construction Commencement 2024

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