Argentina reaffirms the need to “strengthen the infrastructure” of the national hydrogen industry to take advantage of the “potential” that the country has to place itself “on the global map of producers and exporters” of this fuel, and is seeking European funding for this purpose.
“From the point of view of financing, it is very relevant to find resources to develop the necessary infrastructure to achieve this potential,” explained the National Director of Bilateral External Financing Projects of the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs of Argentina, MatÃas Mana, in an interview with EFE in Madrid.
Mana traveled this week to Luxembourg, Germany, France and Spain to seek European financing.
Although the Argentine government’s objective is to produce green hydrogen, the director acknowledged that “particular consideration will be given” to working with blue hydrogen.
The difference lies in the origin of its production: in the case of green hydrogen, renewable energies such as wind or solar energy, and in the case of blue hydrogen, natural gas.
After a meeting with the European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency, an investment of 100 million euros was agreed upon by each of these entities for an electricity transmission project.
The objective is to “improve” the necessary infrastructure to “promote the development of renewable energy generation projects”.
In this sense, Mana pointed out that “most of these lines” are located in areas with a “high potential” for solar and wind energy generation, such as Patagonia and northeastern Argentina.
It could even be possible for localities such as Villa La Angostura (Patagonia) “to do without (fossil) fuels for the generation of the electric energy they need”.
This project, according to him, “is not an accident”, but is in line with the National Hydrogen Strategy 2022-2050 of the National Government, by allowing “interconnecting this renewable energy generation”, which they hope to complete “in the short term”.
Although countries such as Germany, Japan, Korea or Australia have already shown interest in the industry of this fuel in the country, Mana insisted on the importance of generating a regulatory framework that allows direct and private investment in the sector, and added that the forecast is to finish defining it before the end of the year.
For the director, the strategy “has to have as its main focus the export of hydrogen production” because “in terms of domestic consumption, it is not sustainable in Argentina”.
