Joint Statement: We Say No to the South H2 Corridor

The SouthH2 Corridor is a 3,300-kilometre-long infrastructure from North Africa to Germany, via Italy, to transport hydrogen produced largely in Tunisia. Gas transport corporations like Snam, TAG, Gas Connect Austria, and BayerNet took advantage of the European response to the gas crisis in 2022 to label the mega infrastructure as fundamental to guarantee “energy security” for the EU, fast tracking its permitting and construction, and funneling billion of euros in public money for its realization.

Contrary to the corporate hype, long distance hydrogen transport is at odds with responding to the energy and climate crisis through fair and sustainable energy access for people in the African and European continents. It rather responds to fossil corporations’ attempts to extend the fossil fuel economy regardless of climate change, sidelining basic needs of people and the possibility to build a just transition for all. The South H2 Corridor embodies the continuation of neocolonial, extractivist structural injustice and exploitation, perpetrating practices like large scale appropriation of land, water, and renewable energy in the so-called “producing countries” for the sake of a corporate-driven, export-led unsustainable agenda.

Corporations and governments have been using green hydrogen as a smoke screen to leverage public support for expanding a “hydrogen ready” infrastructure network, in the European Union and beyond. However there is no guarantee that such infrastructure will transport only green hydrogen, and neither that the production chain of the transported hydrogen will be socially and environmentally sustainable.

Large scale, export-oriented (green) hydrogen production on the African continent is encouraging a model of development in African countries that is perpetuating the extractivist legacy of the past. It is not welfare promoting but results in export-oriented economies that remove and transport commodities as quickly as possible to meet global demands. This is often accompanied by pollution and exploitation that are unfairly burdening on African people.

Tunisia and other African governments taking part in the construction of export-oriented infrastructure like the South H2 Corridor are encouraged to support these infrastructure projects by loading sovereign debt through public guarantee for derisking private investment. This is contrary to egalitarian aims and places costs and risks related to stranded assets and projects with limited lifespans or profitable lifetimes squarely on public finances, and hence African people.

We say no to the South H2 Corridor, and to any form of public subsidy or public support to private investment into this neocolonial project!

We say no because:

it is a neocolonial project, perpetuating the exploitation and injustice at the core of the extractivist model in European and African countries

it is a project oriented to expand the gas infrastructure network using the “hydrogen ready” label to funnel billion of euro in public subsidies into the renovation of the gas transmission system in Europe instead of taking concrete steps to dismantle it to realise the total phase out from fossil fuels by 2050

it is promoting public debt mechanisms in African countries, who are encouraged to use public money to support or derisk private investments in export-oriented, large scale infrastructure serving a promised demand for green hydrogen on the European market that hasn’t materialised yet

it is strengthening EU fossil gas corporations, who are sitting at the table when energy security policies and infrastructure are discussed at regional and national level, both in Europe and in African countries, legitimising their role in defining the energy transition that would maintain the fossil industry in the driving seat

it is increasing European economies dependency on fossil fuel corporations, instead of rethinking an energy and economic model rooted on sustainability and social justice, reduced energy consumption and community based, democratic, renewable energy production

We call on governments, the EU and African institutions to stop investing in large scale hydrogen production and transport projects that are blocking the construction of a just energy model for communities across Europe and Africa.

For the full statement including signatories click here.