The European Hydrogen Backbone (EHB) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ukrainian grid operator TSO to integrate Ukraine into the European hydrogen infrastructure. In order to ensure a climate-neutral Europe, thirty-one energy infrastructure operators have joined forces to form the EHB project. As part of that vision, green energy will be used to power Europe's digital infrastructure.

In order to supply hydrogen to end users at low costs, the EHB vision is to build an integrated pan-European hydrogen infrastructure. To meet the large demand volumes identified in previous EHB work and to accelerate as part of RePowerEU, as much domestic European supply as possible as well as imports from neighbouring regions will be essential. RePowerEU is a project to make Europe completely independent of Russian fossil fuels by 2030.

"In our assessment of supply potential from countries neighbouring the EHB, we identified among others also Ukraine as essential. I am happy to announce that today EHB entered into an MoU with the TSO of UA. It is the basis of future collaborations to establish the right environment to connect Ukrainian assets to the EU hydrogen infrastructure. We are very close to the Ukrainian TSO and all those affected by the war,” says Daniel Muthmann, Chairman of the European Hydrogen Backbone.

In Europe, hydrogen is already used to generate green energy at data centers. NorthC for example launched their hydrogen-powered backup facility a few weeks ago, and that was one of the first real-life installations. Their data center in Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, will become the first data center in Europe to use fuel cells that run on green hydrogen (H2). This will significantly reduce CO2 emissions. NorthC is investigating whether this hydrogen technology can also be applied to its other data centers.

Photo credit: Zbynek Burival