Frequently asked questions

The members of the initiative share the vision that renewable and low-carbon hydrogen will play an essential role in decarbonising the hard-to-abate sectors in Central Europe and will be crucial to meet the ambitious Paris Agreement target.

The Central European Hydrogen Corridor initiative aims to create a hydrogen “highway” of more than 1225 kilometres of gas pipelines in Central Europe to transport large volumes of hydrogen from future major hydrogen supply areas in Ukraine via Slovakia and the Czech Republic to future hydrogen demand areas in Germany.

The EHB initiative aims to define the critical role of hydrogen infrastructure. All the CEHC participating companies support this aim and are also actively involved in the EHB initiative.

The latest EHB publication outlines potential five hydrogen import corridors. One of these corridors, Corridor E, focus on transportation of green hydrogen produced in Ukraine to Germany. The Central European Hydrogen Corridor is a central part of this corridor that ensures a cost-efficient way to transport hydrogen from Ukraine via Slovakia and the Czech Republic to Germany. The corridor benefits from an existing infrastructure that can be repurposed to transport green hydrogen to demand centres. For more information click here.

The four members of the project are not planning to extend the number of partners in the project but are actively working with hydrogen producers, large hydrogen consumers and other gas infrastructure companies in Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany to help facilitate the production and consumption of hydrogen in Central Europe. For more information contact us.

The project partner submitted PCI/PCI applications with the aim to to complete the project by 2030,. However, turning this project into reality requires, among others, and appropriate and efficient regulatory framework as well as the necessary investment conditions as the participating companies are fully regulated and unbundled transmission system operators. For more detailed timeline click here.

The members of the project have started to explore the technical feasibility of creating a Central European Hydrogen Corridor to transport up to 144 GWh per day or 1.5 million tons per year of hydrogen from Ukraine to southern Germany by 2030.

In addition to the technical feasibility, the project promoters have analysed the potential cost of repurposing specific natural gas pipelines for hydrogen transport, combined with targeted investments in new dedicated hydrogen infrastructure. The 1,225 kilometre part of the Central European Hydrogen Corridor from the Slovak/Ukrainian border to Germany requires an estimated total investment of 1,000 ‑ 1,500 million EUR. The investment cost of the Ukrainian part of the corridor will depend on the location of the hydrogen production sites in Ukraine. Since the CEHC project focuses on retrofitingretrofitting existing pipelines, border transfer stations, and compressor stations, significant costs and time savings can be realized compared to building new infrastructure.

The REPowerEU Plan sets a target of 10 million tons of domestic renewable hydrogen production and further 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen imports by 2030. The CEHC project could transport up to 1.5 million tons of renewable hydrogen imports by 2030, an equivalent of 15 % of the renewable hydrogen import target.