- As part of European Union energy plans, Finland is to receive €51.4 million to expand the hydrogen fuel sector.
- These three projects aim to create excellent investment conditions for clean electricity, hydrogen and hydrogen processing plants nationally and in the wider Baltic Sea Region.
As part of European Union energy plans, Finland is to receive €51.4 million to expand the hydrogen fuel sector. Part of the ongoing European Union programme for decarbonisation recognises that hydrogen fuel will play an important role in the future.
For this reason, the EU has agreed to support Finnish state-owned gas diffusion system operator Gasgrid and its associates by granting a total amount of €51.4 million to support the construction of three pipelines.
The application for this financial support was only submitted to the European Commission in autumn 2024, so the offer of funds (confirmed by Gasgrid on January 31) was delivered relatively quickly.
The intention of the Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor project (which is to receive just over €29 million) is to develop a hydrogen infrastructure connecting Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish and German markets.
The Baltic Sea Hydrogen Collector project(which receives €15.3 million) is aimed at developing an offshore hydrogen infrastructure to connect the Finnish, Swedish and Central European markets.
The Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor (NBHC) project (which is to receive €6.8 million) aims to build hydrogen infrastructure from Finland to Germany via Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
As part of plan to link the Balkans, Finland to receive €51.4 million to expand the hydrogen fuel sector
These three projects aim to create excellent investment conditions for clean electricity, hydrogen and hydrogen processing plants nationally and in the wider Baltic Sea Region.
It has been stressed by Gasgrid that the projects were evaluated against strictly defined criteria: priority and urgency, maturity, quality, impact and catalytic impact.
The European Commission has considered that all three projects contribute to decarbonisation and meeting the EU’s climate and energy targets, which looks to see EU member states reach some 10 per cent of their energy needs with renewable hydrogen by 2050, although work on these corridors should be completed by the 2030s.
“This is excellent news for Finland, the Baltic Sea Region, and the European hydrogen economy as a whole. The decision shows that Finland and the Baltic Sea Region is a strategically important and very competitive region for the development of the hydrogen economy and support EU-climate targets,” commented Sara Kärki, Senior Vice President, Hydrogen Development at Gasgrid, as the news was revealed.