Gas companies in Europe and America are looking at using the existing gas network to serve industrial “clusters” of hydrogen users in sectors like chemicals, cement and steelmaking, adopting a “phased approach” endorsed by the European Commission.
Embracing the EU’s climate neutrality objective is “a real paradigm shift for the gas industry” that will entail delivering “decreasing quantities of natural gas” of fossil origin, according to Pierre Duvieusart, Deputy CEO of GRTgaz, the French gas infrastructure company.
But as the industry scales down fossil gas, it is simultaneously making way for growing quantities of renewable and decarbonised gases such as biomethane and hydrogen, he told a EURACTIV event last week.