Building on the declaration of intent (JDol) on the development of the H2Med Southern Hydrogen Corridor, signed in Rome on January 22, 2025, between Germany, Algeria, Italy, Austria and Tunisia, the German Ministry for Development, and after similar funding for an Egyptian project, on February 11, 2025 announced a start-up investment of 30 mln of their PtX Development Fund in Morocco for green hydrogen production, like ammonia, linked to make food production more climate-friendly and less dependent on imported fossil fertilizers.

This Southern Hydrogen Corridor is intended to create a direct pipeline connection for gaseous hydrogen between North Africa and Italy, Austria and Germany and will have a length of approx. 3500-4000 km of 60-70% converted natural gas pipelines. This would allow up to 163 TWh/year of renewable hydrogen to be transported to Europe and 55 TWh to Germany.

The hydrogen infrastructure projects along this corridor, which stretch from Sicily to Bavaria, are all European Projects of Common Interest (PCI) and the thsis Corridor has reached “Global Gateway” project status by the EU. A bilateral taskforce between Germany Alegaria and Tunesia Tunisia should ensure the pipeline to North Africa; Tunesia has already signed ten letters of intent for hydrogen projects, Algeria has announced the development of a hydrogen production project with companies from Austria, Germany and Italy.

The next step is to concretize the hydrogen pipeline to North Africa – a project that the BMWK is actively supporting through its bilateral hydrogen task force with Algeria and through close cooperation with German and local institutions in Algeria and Tunisia.

The partnership German with Morocco includes the construction of a production plant for green hydrogen in the Jorf industrial zone, around 100 kilometers south of Casablanca, by the company Hydrojeel of the Moroccan OCP Group, to produce up to 100,000 tons towards 3 mln tons of green ammonia per year by the end of 2026.

The project is part of the German-Moroccan Alliance for Climate and Energy. Similar alliances have been agreed with Brazil, South Africa, Tunisia and Algeria in developing hydrogen projects that would otherwise be difficult to implement on the market. The aim is to ensure that developing countries benefit from the new green hydrogen economy in the long term and ofcourse could help cover Germany’s hydrogen needs in the future. The first investment for an Egyptian hydrogen proj.ect was signed at the Hamburg Sustainability Conference in fall 2024.

Photo: Courtesy of OCP group featuring the location of a new $7 bln ammonia production facility announced last December, near Tarfaya in Morocco’s south, powered by 3.8 GW of wind and solar energy The plant will use with desalinated water to produce 200,000 tonnes per year of renewable ammonia from 2026, rising to 1 million tonnes per year by 2027 and 3 million tonnes per year from 2032.