Hydrogen, new robbery and joke for Sardinia

World Tour

Press agencies around the world beat the news with three crosses, a symbol not of multiple burials, but of absolute importance to the news. In the scenario of war between Russia and Ukraine, fought with missiles and denied oil, the revelation was destined to overturn the history of today and tomorrow. In practice, the Algerian and Italian governments, overcoming any delay, were applying to govern a process not of precariousness, but of a strategic vision of the energy future. No longer just stopgaps, but projects capable of achieving objectives capable of going beyond the contingent of the energy crisis. The project on which they announced the signing of the agreement with loud sirens therefore had a double value: to allow, within two, three years, to supply Sardinia, Italy and Europe with gas coming from North Africa through a new methane pipeline able, however, to transport, in the near future, also green hydrogen, the one that Algeria is a candidate to produce in large quantities by exploiting the deserts and the sun in abundance.

Hydrogen gas

A futuristic project, forerunner of a modern and innovative energy strategy. The plan was to use the layouts of the original Galsi, the one signed and designed in the early 2000s, with Sardinia as the protagonist and shareholder of a decisive infrastructure, capable of bringing the island out of energy isolation, considering that, for the 'absence of gas, the Sardinians, the only ones in Europe in this condition, were, and are, forced to pay for energy 50% more than any other Italian and European citizen.

Multiple shipwreck

After the sinking of the first project, against the opposition of ENI, determined to govern the supply of gas in Italy and beyond under a monopoly regime, the new and modern project announced by Premier Meloni and the Algerian President seemed to be a done deal. However, that was not the case. Just one hundred days after that announcement in Algeria, the plan to supply Europe with new gas and above all with new hydrogen crashes in the palaces of Berlin and Vienna.

Betrayal of Algiers

With the endorsement of the Meloni government itself, with the signature of the three ministries of Energy, Italian, German and Austrian, an act was signed which cancels, in fact, without a fight, and with everyone's silence, the commitments they had, for the second time, placed Sardinia at the center of an energy project in the heart of the Mediterranean. Heavy signatures given that Italy, Germany and Austria have signed a letter to give the green light to the hydrogen corridor called "SoutH2". A letter that leaves no hope for the centrality of Sardinia: the map attached to the signed plan does not allow for digressions, the new "hydrogen pipeline", which will connect Algeria with Berlin, will pass through Sicily. The maps disclosed on the day of the Algiers summit between the Meloni government and the Tebboune government, with central Sardinia in the project, are already waste paper before the summer.

Forced signatures

The signatures sent to Brussels at the bottom have a declared objective, to obtain the status of Project of Common Interest (PCI). The operation will be managed by three specialized companies: Snam, the Italian gas infrastructure operator, Trans Austria Gasleitung (TAG) and Gas Connect Austria (GCA) in Austria and Bayernets in Germany. An armored partnership to develop the «SoutH 2 Corridor», a hydrogen-ready pipeline corridor to connect North Africa to Central Europe, with the task of allowing green hydrogen, the renewable one, produced in the southern Mediterranean to reach European consumers.

Hat on hydrogen

The operation's website is still far-fetched, the internal pages are still being developed, but the companies have locked down the domain, as if to say: we arrived before others. The little information on the project is contained in the maps that we publish: Italy is the corridor-hub for the connection with Tunisia, which would not be appreciated by Algeria in any case, while the boot would be the main adduction to then distribute the hydrogen in central, eastern and western Europe. The emblematic datum of the project is that, after a century, Sardinia is once again totally excluded from any energy plan capable of putting Sardinians on a par with any other European citizen.

Sardinia out of everything

The Southern Hydrogen Corridor (also called "SouthH Corridor 2 "), underpinning the agreement between the three governments is a network of hydrogen-ready gas pipelines 3,300 km long which will form the European hydrogen backbone. The content of the plan is a slap in the face to the energy gaps that Sardinia has been carrying for decades: the hydrogen backbone and network will guarantee the security of supply by providing interconnected and diversified energy. They don't send him to say: «the hydrogen pipeline will have a hydrogen import capacity equal to 40% of the import target of the European energy strategy». The Isola dei Nuraghi, in the deafening silence of the Sardinian institutions, has once again been eliminated from everything, from Rome and Brussels.