Welcome, thank you. Elena, good morning again. The messages we have heard in this institutional inauguration are a magnificent starting point for my speech for today's event, from the confirmation that green hydrogen is an absolute priority for Europe, for its energy transition project of strategic autonomy where competitiveness and decarbonization are two sides of the same coin. During today's event, we will bring together the key players in Europe for the different segments of the hydrogen value chain and we will see the progress being made in the deployment of a green hydrogen economy in Europe. Many thanks to all who are with us here today and also to those following us via streaming. A year ago, we spoke on this same stage about the advances that would take place in the following 12 months to make the promise of hydrogen in Europe a reality, and a year later we confirm that these advances have indeed taken place. 2024 has marked a before and after in the journey of hydrogen in Europe and in Spain, with very notable milestones. I would like to recall, for example, that in April the list of European Common Interest Projects was published, including for the first time hydrogen infrastructure projects, among which were those presented by Enagás and our European partners and colleagues: the Spanish hydrogen backbone and the H2Med corridor. In July, the decarbonized gas and hydrogen directive was published, which will be decisive for structuring the hydrogen network in Europe. In April, as the President of the Government announced, the results of the first auction of the European Hydrogen Bank were announced, with a very clear role for the Iberian Peninsula as a green hydrogen production hub for Europe. In December, the second auction has been opened with a strong increase in ambition, 50% more funds, to which some member states have contributed additional funds, such as the 400 million contributed by the Government of Spain, which the President of the Government also mentioned. Green hydrogen is advancing at an unprecedented speed in the deployment of a new energy vector.
Europe is fully aware that now more than ever we must bet on strategic autonomy and that green hydrogen is the perfect meeting point between the competitiveness agenda and the green agenda. Therefore, the new European Commission, as Vice President Rivera has emphasized, has renewed and redoubled its commitment to the deployment of a green hydrogen network in Europe as a fundamental part of the European project. All of Europe is advancing in that direction. In the next panel, we will see how our colleagues and friends from other European TSOs provide us with abundant information on the pace of deployment of the hydrogen network in other European countries. The aggregate figures are impressive: 17 member states have already included in their National Integrated Energy and Climate Plans green hydrogen electrolysis targets totaling 52 GW of installed capacity. There are 48 hydrogen infrastructure projects already approved as PCIs, totaling 211,000 km of hydrogen pipelines with an investment of 60 billion euros. These magnitudes leave no doubt that we are in a new cycle in Europe, with an integrative, shared project such as the creation of that European hydrogen network. For its part, the Government of Spain, as we have heard, has led the commitment to fight climate change with important hydrogen milestones. I would like to highlight, first of all, the approval of the PNIEC 2023-2030, which tripled the target of installed electrolyzer capacity to 12 GW by 2030. The PNIEC also underlined the strategic status of the Spanish hydrogen backbone and the H2Med corridor. Spain has been one of the first European countries to begin transposing the decarbonized gas and hydrogen directive, and the Government of Spain designated Enagás as the provisional operator of the hydrogen network (HTN) and in July developed that mandate, entrusting Enagás with the start of the deployment of the hydrogen infrastructure projects recognized as PCIs, which are the Spanish part of the H2Med corridor, the first two axes of the Spanish hydrogen network (the first axes, sorry) and the first two underground hydrogen storage facilities that will support that network.
Continuing that mandate, today we announce that we have submitted to the second PCI call last November the addition of four new projects to the Spanish hydrogen backbone: the Guitiriz-Zamora hydrogen pipeline (Galicia-Zamora), the Huelva-Algeciras hydrogen pipeline in Andalusia, the Northern Plateau transverse hydrogen pipeline that will connect Zamora with Navarra, and the Southern Plateau transverse hydrogen pipeline that will connect Puertollano in Castilla-La Mancha with Madrid and the Spanish Levant. This proposal is the result of the call for interest we launched in the last quarter of 2023, the results of which we presented on this stage exactly one year ago. With these expansions, the Spanish hydrogen backbone will connect all peninsular autonomous communities, which constitutes a great element of territorial cohesion in our country, and furthermore, that capillarity of the hydrogen backbone is a key element for the competitiveness and decarbonization of our industry. We will know throughout this year whether these projects are approved as PCIs by the European Union, but in any case, the final map of hydrogen infrastructure in Spain will be the result of the planning carried out by the Government of Spain. I will briefly update the main advances of the PCI projects that were already approved in the first list. As for the Spanish hydrogen network, the backbone, the schedule is advancing even faster than we initially anticipated, with very relevant milestones in the administrative and permitting area and in the technical and engineering area. We have already completed all the conceptual engineering of the backbone. We have begun to award specialized engineering firms the first elements of the conceptual engineering. We have already awarded the conceptual engineering of the first two compression stations of the network, and soon we will award the conceptual engineering of the first sections of linear infrastructure. Today we want to announce that the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge has approved the conceptual plan for public participation that we presented as part of the processing of the backbone as a PCI project. We will begin to develop this conceptual public participation plan at the end of March, beginning of April. It will be a process that lasts 18 months, which will involve the autonomous communities, municipalities, and all interested parties in close coordination with the Government of Spain. Note that this is the largest public participation process ever carried out in Spain on a structure of 2,600 linear kilometers with more than 1,000 interested parties.
Later in today's event, Natalia Latorre and Jesús Hiral will explain in greater detail how we are going to approach this exercise. This public participation seeks two objectives: to facilitate the administrative processing that will allow us to make the final investment decision for the backbone in November 2027, and to ensure optimal transparent involvement of the territories and stakeholders in a project of that magnitude. As for H2Med, it is the infrastructure that will allow us, at the beginning of the next decade, to connect the renewable potential of the Iberian Peninsula with the demand of the industrial heart of Europe. It is an absolutely strategic corridor for Europe. Since it was presented in December 2022 jointly by the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the leaders of France, Emmanuel Macron, and Portugal, at that time António Costa, and subsequently with the adhesion also of Germany, H2Med is a hydrogen corridor that represents a benchmark of maturity in Europe thanks to the solidity of cooperation with our partners of REN, GRTgaz, TIGF, and OGE, and to the fact that at the end of last year we jointly launched a market consultation process, a call for interest, which is the first of its kind for a trans-European hydrogen infrastructure. Later we have a panel on this matter by GRTgaz and OGE. I would like to give you just two headlines: the call for interest has been a great success in participation, it has obtained the support of the entire European hydrogen value chain, with 528 projects presented by 168 companies from our four countries. These results confirm the great European demand for green hydrogen and consolidate the Iberian Peninsula, Spain, as a major production hub in Europe. Overall, the milestones planned for 2025 indicate that in the coming months, both the Spanish hydrogen backbone and the H2Med corridor will take a big step towards becoming a reality.
I conclude with some conclusions. First of all, in 2024, Europe has taken a giant leap to make the bet on green hydrogen a reality. And in that bet, Spain and Enagás have carried out a great set of initiatives so that the Iberian Peninsula and Spain are a benchmark in this strategic challenge of the future. Our five major infrastructure projects have been selected as PCIs and are advancing at cruising speed in all areas. H2Med is already the most mature corridor in Europe, after being a pioneer in developing a market test, a call for interest, among all the actors in the value chain. The Spanish hydrogen network is advancing in its administrative aspects but also technological and engineering, and will meet in 2025 a key milestone with the development of this public participation process. We also open a key stage in the European Union, where the new Commission has made the deployment of the hydrogen network a priority, inspired by the Letta and Draghi reports that were presented last year. And equally, the member states are stepping on the accelerator of their initiatives to be part of that great European initiative, as we will see later. We are all the TSOs that are here today, all of you, all the actors in the value chain. But of course, at Enagás we are working to ensure that 2025 is remembered as the year the Spanish network and the European hydrogen network took off. For this, there is no time to lose. Thank you very much.
