Study: North African Green Hydrogen Exports to EU Economically Unviable

Entitled "Assessing EU Plans to Import Hydrogen from North Africa", this study points out that "Morocco, Algeria and Egypt’s hydrogen export projects - the three North African nations planning to develop local green hydrogen industries - are potentially economically unviable." For the authors of the study, "using renewable electricity (solar and wind) locally and sharing it with neighboring African and possibly Middle Eastern countries through interconnections would be a much more efficient option than trying to create an export market for very expensive chemical products."

According to them, it makes little sense for these three Maghreb countries to use their renewable electricity to produce hydrogen and hydrogen-based products, then ship them to Europe at a high energy cost, so that the EU can achieve climate emissions reductions. To support their argument, they recall that the overwhelming majority of Morocco’s electricity comes from coal. Algeria draws nearly 100% of its electricity from natural gas, while more than 90% of Egypt’s is produced from oil and gas.