Core network to start with 525 kilometers in 2025
First 525 kilometers to be completed by 2025 - gas network operators confident
07.01.2025
Source: E & M powernews
Gas network operators are confident: the first 525 kilometers of the new nationwide hydrogen core network should be completed in 2025.
The industry association Vereinigung der Fernleitungsnetzbetreiber Gas (FNB Gas) explained on request: "We currently have no information about delays in the course of 2025."
The Federal Network Agency approved the so-called hydrogen core network in October last year. As reported, it is to grow to 9,040 kilometers by 2032 and connect important hydrogen locations in all federal states: Ports, production sites and industrial centers. The total costs of around 19 billion euros are to be borne by the private sector - with state support through the capping of grid fees.
In the end, around 40 percent of the lines are to be newly built. Existing natural gas pipelines will be converted for the remaining 60 percent. For the first 525 kilometers, 507 kilometers of existing pipelines will be converted.
The longest converted section of the core network, which is due to be commissioned as early as 2025, runs from Lubmin (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) on the Baltic Sea to Bobbau, a district of Bitterfeld-Wolfen in Saxony-Anhalt - a distance of almost 400 kilometers. Also in Saxony-Anhalt, a hydrogen pipeline almost 25 kilometers long is to be built between Bad Lauchstädt and Leuna-Süd - again by converting the pipeline.
Longer sections are also to be completed in the west as part of the "Get H2" initiative, including a 50-kilometre conversion pipeline between Lingen (Lower Saxony) and Legden (North Rhine-Westphalia) and a new 11-kilometre pipeline that will connect an underground hydrogen storage facility to the grid in 2027. The energy company RWE plans to commission a 100 MW electrolyzer for hydrogen production in Lingen in 2025.
The plan is to make the 525-kilometer pipeline ready for hydrogen transport. The pipeline operators cannot yet say whether hydrogen will actually be flowing through the pipelines to customers in 2025. "That is a question of the market, i.e. the traders," says the industry association FNB Gas.
The expansion of the core network will then continue at a slower pace in 2026. According to the FNB Gas industry association, around 142 kilometers of hydrogen pipelines will be completed, only 2 kilometers of which will be newly built.
Author: Claus-Detlef Grossmann
