To achieve the climate-neutrality target by 2050, green hydrogen is gaining importance among the carbon-neutral solutions in the European strategic framework. Specifically, within the adoption of the Fit-for-55 Package and REPowerEU, the European Union aims to boost up hydrogen and its uptake, supporting both domestic production and competitive import options.

While assuming a strategic role in the transition context and defining new or consolidated alliances worldwide, clean hydrogen must overcome a series of criticalities in order to be cost-effective and competitive. Beside economic barriers, there are technological challenges, environmental issues, geopolitical factors, lack of infrastructure and other elements making uncertain the hydrogen market and its evolution, specifically in the long-term.

Within this context, North African countries can represent an opportunity for Europe to be consistent with the decarbonization target for 2050; this work discusses impacts and competitiveness of green hydrogen trade from North Africa to Europe, exploiting long-term scenario analyses.

Aiming to become hydrogen export-oriented countries, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are analyzed with respect to their possibility to produce and transport hydrogen, by pipelines or ships, to Europe. To this end, it is exploited the JRC-EU-TIMES model to build long-term scenarios which allow to trade hydrogen by pipelines or ships, in case of market growth and strength (i.e. optimistic case) or of lower coordination and more criticalities in hydrogen uptake (i.e. pessimistic one). Focusing on the different sources of uncertainty to make hydrogen competitive, these scenario analyses allow to study to what extent green hydrogen trade from North Africa could support the European decarbonization.

As a result, it is found that in the short-term (2030) only pipelines in the optimistic case can be chosen as competitive option, while by 2050 in each case it is allowed to import green hydrogen from North Africa, regardless the costs. On consumption side, the additional amount is mostly converted into synfuels and heat. At country level, there are different reactions to trade; Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands are directly involved in trade. In each case, it is assessed that Europe will need clean hydrogen from North Africa as effective contribution to the achievement of the climate-neutrality target.