Morocco, Algeria, Egypt: Assessing EU Plans To Import Hydrogen From North Africa
Access: Open report
This report remains freely available as an open report. It was published by the Corporate Europe Observatory and The Transnational Institute as an assessment of European plans to turn Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt into green hydrogen export hubs. Michael Barnard contributed the economic analysis of green hydrogen production and export assumptions that was later expanded in CleanTechnica.
Provenance
Report title: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt: Assessing EU Plans To Import Hydrogen From North Africa
Publishing organizations: Corporate Europe Observatory and The Transnational Institute
Contributor: Michael Barnard
Original publication context: Public-interest report on European green hydrogen import strategy
Access model: Open report
Current archive: TFIE Strategy Briefing Reports
Recognition
This report was commissioned by Corporate Europe Observatory and The Transnational Institute, who asked me to assess European plans to source green hydrogen from Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt. Their concern was the political economy of export-oriented hydrogen: whether North African renewable electricity, land, water, infrastructure finance, and policy attention would be used to serve local decarbonization and development, or redirected toward European demand for clean molecules.
I wrote the report on their behalf, focusing on the economics, infrastructure, and opportunity costs of green hydrogen exports. The central finding remains straightforward: hydrogen can be green without being cheap, and cheap green hydrogen requires very low-cost electricity, high electrolyzer utilization, disciplined capital costs, and end uses willing to pay the full delivered price. Those conditions are often missing from export narratives, especially when direct electrification and domestic renewable electricity use would deliver more local value.
Why this report matters
North African hydrogen export plans are often framed as a win-win: Europe gets clean molecules, North Africa gets investment, and fossil gas infrastructure gets a second life. The report tests that story against energy economics, infrastructure realities, development priorities, and the opportunity cost of using renewable electricity to serve European demand instead of domestic decarbonization.
The central question is not whether Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt can build renewable electricity. They can. The question is whether using that electricity to manufacture hydrogen for export is the best pathway for their economies, grids, industries, and citizens.
Key questions
What problem is this report testing?
Whether EU plans to import green hydrogen from North Africa are technically, economically, and developmentally sound, or whether they reproduce an extractive energy relationship under a green label.
What must the pathway beat?
It must beat domestic use of renewable electricity, direct electrification, local industrial decarbonization, transmission of electricity, storage, efficiency, and regional grid strengthening.
What is the main economic challenge?
Green hydrogen is expensive when electricity is not extremely cheap and electrolyzers are not highly utilized. Export hydrogen also adds compression, storage, transport, conversion, reconversion, and distribution costs.
What is the main development challenge?
Export-led hydrogen can divert renewable electricity, land, water, infrastructure finance, and political attention away from domestic decarbonization and industrial development.
Who is this report for?
Policy makers, NGOs, journalists, infrastructure strategists, energy analysts, development organizations, and anyone evaluating hydrogen export claims between Europe and North Africa.
Short answers
Green hydrogen can be green without being cheap.
The economics depend on electricity cost, electrolyzer utilization, balance-of-plant costs, financing, water, storage, transport, and the end use. Cheap production assumptions often ignore too much of the system.
Europe’s demand story is not automatically North Africa’s opportunity.
Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt can use renewable investment to build domestic grids, electrify industries, reduce fossil imports, and prepare for carbon-border exposure. Exporting hydrogen to Europe may be a worse use of scarce clean electricity.
Hydrogen pipelines are not magic infrastructure reuse.
Repurposing gas pipelines for hydrogen brings leakage, embrittlement, compression, metering, safety, and energy-transport penalties. Later CleanTechnica analysis revisited those pipeline assumptions and found Europe’s hydrogen-pipeline story remained economically weak.
Local decarbonization should come first.
North African economies face their own industrial, grid, fertilizer, water, and development challenges. The strongest use of European capital may be to build renewable electricity, transmission, storage, and local industrial capacity, not to export inefficient molecules north.
The political economy matters.
The report is as much about power as technology. Export hydrogen can become energy colonialism if European policy locks North African renewable resources into Europe’s decarbonization story while leaving local economies with higher costs and fewer direct benefits.
Key findings
European hydrogen import plans risk overstating both the affordability and strategic value of North African green hydrogen exports.
Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt have stronger domestic uses for renewable electricity than exporting inefficient molecules to Europe.
Green hydrogen production economics depend heavily on electricity cost, utilization, finance, and balance-of-plant costs.
Existing gas pipeline reuse for hydrogen is technically and economically weaker than many policy narratives imply.
Export-oriented hydrogen can divert capital, infrastructure, land, water, and political attention from domestic decarbonization.
North African countries should capture useful renewable investment while avoiding long-term dependence on hydrogen export promises.
Update note
The report remains current as a warning about hydrogen export narratives. European hydrogen import plans, pipeline proposals, and synthetic fuel claims continue to appear, but the core economics have not changed: direct electrification and domestic renewable use usually beat manufacturing hydrogen for export unless the end use is genuinely hard to electrify and willing to pay the full delivered cost.
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Reuse note
This is an open report. Please cite the Corporate Europe Observatory, The Transnational Institute, and the report contributors where relevant. For the hydrogen economics analysis, cite Michael Barnard as contributor.
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