Dur e Adan

While Central Europe grapples with securing green hydrogen for its industries to move toward a low-carbon economy, its focus has shifted to Africa, a region with abundant solar and wind resources. Under the REPowerEU strategy, the European Commission aims to consume 20 million tons of renewable hydrogen annually by 2030, half of which must be produced abroad. The industrial regions of Central Europe, including Southern Germany and Austria, are constrained by insufficient capacity to electrify their industries. The industrial process occurs via energy-dense gas molecules rather than electrons. Central Europe does not have enough space for solar and offshore wind generation; it uses zero-carbon hydrogen and reaps the benefits of projects like the SoutH2 Corridor, which spans 3,300 kilometres. Nonetheless, this considerable energy infrastructure depends on an unavoidable thermodynamic truth: splitting water molecules into green hydrogen through electrolysis requires huge amounts of clean water. In a region already suffering severe and ongoing water scarcity, a disturbing structural paradox arises. Can North Africa meet Europe's power needs for a green future without depleting its own domestic lifeblood?

To overcome this limitation and avoid depleting water resources, hydrogen producers instead use coastal seawater. From an engineering and economic point of view, the maths makes good sense, as water electrolysis is expected to use a minimum of 9 litres of water for each kilogram of hydrogen produced, but in commercial terms, including purification, deionization, and industrial cooling, the water used can go up to 20 or 30 litres per kg. The production facilities of the future SouthH2 Corridor in North Africa would require approximately 80 to 120 million cubic meters of water per year, given the planned export volume of 4 million tons of hydrogen. The process of desalination imposes negligible costs on overall production, resulting in an additional expenditure of under five cents per kilogram of hydrogen. Modern reverse osmosis requires only 3 to 4 kWh of power per cubic meter of purified water, accounting for less than 0.1% of the energy normally consumed by gigawatt-scale electrolysers. As such, planners see the Mediterranean as virtually an infinite source of raw materials that only avoids direct competition with local freshwater aquifers.

Also read: Spain’s Strategic Engagement with Africa in the 21st Century

However, viewing water security solely from an economic perspective overlooks important socio-ecological realities of communities along the Mediterranean coast. In places that have a long history of industrialization, such as Gabes, Tunisia, where decades of manufacturing chemicals have already resulted in serious marine pollution, local communities are understandably cautious and skeptical about the arrival of international hydrogen alliances. Local societies highlight that heavy coastal infrastructure has its own environmental costs, specifically the constant release of hypersaline brine into shallow coastal waters, which seriously endangers the area’s marine biodiversity.

There is also a facet of socio-political conflict, as local communities and agricultural labourers suffer under strict seasonal water rationing while neighbouring foreign-funded plants use local water to produce millions of gallons of clean fuel for export. If European factories receive clean fuel at the expense of local regions, the trade balance is likely to replicate past patterns of resource exploitation.

In an attempt to prevent this ambitious energy transformation from being perceived as "green colonialism," international regulatory frameworks and developers' project models are being shifted toward the principles of integrated, dual-purpose infrastructure. Based on the regulations associated with the EU Global Gateway initiative and interstate agreements, the developers' unions need to build over-dimensioned desalination plants along the coasts and leave about 20-30% of the total freshwater production for distribution to local municipalities and farming. Thanks to the integration of community utility investments, hydrogen projects have the potential to solve long-term municipal water problems rather than worsen them. Secondly, additional construction of local energy networks will enable the use of high-efficiency water substations to provide communities with new energy sources rather than drawing energy from local power stations.

Also read: Geopolitics of the Red Sea: How Somali-land Reshaped Regional Alignments

In conclusion, the future of the trans-Mediterranean hydrogen business depends on establishing an equilibrium between exporting and importing countries in economic and socio-ecological terms. If environmental issues are simply transferred across borders to achieve EU climate targets, decarbonization cannot be considered sustainable in real terms. With the combination of hydrogen off-take agreements, compulsory investment in dual-use water infrastructure, modernization of regional grids, and building local production capacity, North African countries and EU customers can create a sustainable connection that protects local communities and provides the opportunity for industrialization at scale.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of The Himalayan Research Institute Pakistan (THRIP)

_________________________________ 

Dur-e-Adan is a research intern at Himalayan Research Institute. She holds a BS (Hons) in International Relations from Government College University (GCU) Lahore, Pakistan. Her research focuses on International Political Economy, with a specialized emphasis on clean energy transitions and green hydrogen infrastructure.