The President of the Spanish Government Pedro Sanchez and the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, succeeded in overcoming the reluctance of Emmanuel Macron by “abandoning” the MidCat project in favor of an alternative project whose objective is to increase the energy interconnections of Spain and Portugal with France.
The negotiations between the three heads of state took place on Thursday 20 October during the meeting held in Brussels a few hours before the start of the European Council. The project for a new “energy corridor” between Barcelona and Marseille aims to connect the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of the EU and will be used to transport gas and renewable hydrogen on both sides of the Pyrenees.
“We have reached an agreement between the three governments to replace the MidCat project with a new green energy corridor that will connect the Iberian Peninsula to France and the European energy market, proposing the Barcelona-Marseille alternative”, explained Pedro Sanchez on his arrival at the European Council. It will be, he said, “a pipeline for green hydrogen and also for gas during the transition”.
The end of the MidCat project
The announcement made in Brussels therefore puts an end to a dispute of several months between Madrid and Paris. Pedro Sánchez defended, with the support of Lisbon and Berlin, the MidCat infrastructure that would allow gas to be transported from the Iberian Peninsula to Northern Europe via the Pyrenees. Paris, on the other hand, argued that the construction of MidCat would take too long to respond to the current energy crisis and, moreover, that it was an investment contrary to the fight against climate change.
MidCat was first buried in 2019 due to excessive costs. The war in Ukraine, energy shortages and Germany’s search for alternative gas suppliers to Russia led Spain, Portugal and Germany to promote its termination, but France’s refusal was resounding again. Among the proposed alternatives is that promoted by Sánchez, Costa and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to convert the MidCat into a hydrogen tube in the future.
A change of route
The MidCat project will therefore be replaced by a 360 km maritime corridor between Barcelona and Marseille. The new infrastructure, informally called BarMar, will in the future transport renewable hydrogen as well as a limited proportion of natural gas as a temporary and transitional energy source.
According to the joint press release issued by the three governments, these are “the most direct and effective option to connect the Iberian Peninsula to the center of Europe”following on from another renewable gas interconnection project between Celourico da Beira (Portugal) and Zamora (Spain).
The agreement also includes a commitment to accelerate and finalize a new electricity interconnection across the Bay of Biscay, as well as to identify, assess and implement new electricity interconnections between France and Spain, on which Paris had insisted in recent months as an alternative to MidCat.
The dissatisfaction of environmental organizations
Environmental and social organizations, including Greenpeace, WWF and the Observatory of Debt in Globalization (ODG), oppose and deem the construction of BarMar unnecessary.
“This infrastructure proposal does not meet the needs of citizens to deal with the energy crisis and moves away from a just energy transition”say the organizations in a joint statement, in which they announce a campaign to stop the gas project.
In addition, they criticize the fact that BarMar will transport fossil gas “at least during this decade, because it is estimated that the entry into service to transport hydrogen will be in 2030”.
The environmental movements also point out the difficulty of building this underwater gas pipeline which, according to them, would require “special materials, such as a specific steel alloy, and more powerful and adapted compressors, all at very high costs”as well as technical studies of the seabed and impacts on marine ecosystems.
Although the route is still unknown, according to environmentalists it is likely that it crosses the Gulf of León, “which is one of the areas with the highest biodiversity index in the Mediterranean, where there are marine protected areas, the cetacean corridor and the Pelagos Sanctuary”.
New differences in favor of nuclear power
Less than a week after agreeing on the construction of the BarMar, the Spanish and French governments have once again expressed their differences with regard to this source of energy.
In this case, it is not about its transport, but about its very essence. While Spain insists it must be “green” and obtained with electricity from renewable sources that do not emit CO2 into the atmosphere, France agrees with the mantra ” zero emissions”, but argues that the process must also be possible, with equal treatment, thanks to nuclear energy, an idea also supported by Germany and six other EU countries.
Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher regretted that for the moment Brussels’ plans do not include hydrogen of nuclear origin, and referred to the letter in which eight EU countries asked the Commission to take into account the separation of hydrogen from the other elements in which it is found in nature by an electrical process based on nuclear energy.
Opposing energy strategies
Paris and Berlin have been at odds for months over what steps to take to curb energy inflation. Emmanuel Macron insisted on the advisability of buying community gas.
The French president has pledged to extend to the rest of the EU the Iberian mechanism for decoupling the price of electricity and gas, which has allowed Spain to currently benefit from a significantly lower cost of electricity to that of Germany or France. But the German government has blocked these proposals for months while supporting the MidCat gas pipeline project between Spain and France, which will eventually be abandoned in favor of an undersea hydrogen pipeline linking Barcelona and Marseille.
The French president also did not appreciate Berlin’s announcement at the end of September of a 200 billion euro aid package for German companies, whose industry is on a tightrope after the tap was turned off. Russian gas. To accusations of national selfishness, Germany replied that all countries defend their interests and accused the French of promoting European solutions that seek above all to favor France’s priorities.
For now, Sanchez, Macron and Costa have not yet agreed on when the BarMar infrastructure will be built, when it could be operational and how it will be financed. The three parties have agreed to finalize these details on December 8 and 9 at the Euro-Mediterranean summit to be held in Alicante.