Rome, 30 July 2025 – ReCommon launches today the report ‘Is the hydrogen strategy just a favour to Snam?’, written with the technical and analytical support of academics Leonardo Setti and Federico De Robbio. The report demonstrates how the two objectives of the Italian government’s hydrogen strategy – decarbonisation and energy security – cannot be achieved. To the contrary, the government’s very generic guidelines are almost exclusively to the benefit of Snam, one of the world’s leading companies in the construction and management of gas transport networks. For the Italian corporation, hydrogen becomes a “useful tool” for extending the life of old gas infrastructure and laying new pipelines, thereby fuelling its business as usual.
The Hydrogen Strategy hypothesises various future scenarios for the diffusion of hydrogen in the economy, with projections up to 2050. The hypoteses change based on two main variables: national demand and the composition of the hydrogen mix available on the market, between domestic production and imports. The former may simply be higher or lower. The latter is the decisive factor in fully understanding the value of the government’s strategy, being it based on specific political choices. Hydrogen can be more or less clean, depending on whether it is produced from renewables (green), gas (grey) or from gas with CO2 capture and storage (blue). ‘Diffusion/ spread’ is an indicator of the relationship between supply and demand: in other words, in order to “spread”, hydrogen needs to be both produced and demanded.
Research shows that if hydrogen production were to be concentrated in Italy, the use of renewables alone would not be sufficient to achieve the government targets, as the figures demonstrate. To obtain green hydrogen using energy produced through hydroelectric, biomass or geothermal plants, with a total annual production of 44.5 TWh, more energy would be used than would be obtained. If, on the other hand, all of the more than 58 TWh of energy from photovoltaic and wind power produced in Italy in a year were used to produce green hydrogen, only 1.1 million tonnes of green hydrogen in gaseous form or 0.9 million tonnes of green hydrogen in liquid form would be produced. This is a very low amount, which would cover little more than the minimum domestic production threshold of the high penetration scenario (0.7 million tonnes per year), but using the entire wind and photovoltaic capacity currently installed in Italy. To make this scenario sustainable, Italy would have to double its renewable energy production capacity overnight and allocate it entirely to hydrogen production. This is an unfeasible hypothesis. This is why the use of CO₂ capture and storage is being considered by the governmental strategy to increase hydrogen production. However this would no longer be “green” hydrogen as it would be derived from the fossil fuel supply chain, thus increasing dependence on oil and gas.
If the hydrogen produced in Italy were grey (from fossil fuels) rather than green, climate-changing emissions could actually increase. In the “Basis” diffusion scenario, assuming mainly grey hydrogen production, CO₂ emissions could increase by 26 million tonnes, or +6.7% compared to current Italian emissions. In the “High” hydrogen penetration scenario, CO₂ equivalent emissions could rise by as much as 52 million tonnes, or +13.3% compared to current Italian GHG emissions.
Moving on to the import-based scenario, one of the assumptions of the Italian strategy is that producing hydrogen in North Africa, particularly in Tunisia and Algeria, could be cost-effective as the cost of production in these countries would be much lower than in Italy. Another precondition concerns the future benefits, again in terms of cost reductions, that should result from technological innovation in electrolysers. Unfortunately the strategy does not explore any of these aspects in depth, nor does it provide reference data, leaving us in this limbo of blind faith in existing power structures, the market and technological innovation.
There are numerous hidden costs that the strategy overlooks. For example, the cost of transporting hydrogen over long distances, which requires three times the energy needed to transport fossil gas. Specifically, at least 20TWh of renewable power would be needed just to transport and distribute hydrogen imported from North Africa. The assumption of importing 0.7 million tonnes of green hydrogen, as envisaged in the strategy’s “basis” diffusion scenario, would mean using 20TWh to obtain the equivalent of 19TWh of useful electricity. This is a paradox of inefficiency, even more so when we are talking about renewable energy that could be used directly in Italy, Tunisia and Algeria, providing greater benefits to the resident population and the local productive sector. Yet the option of importing green hydrogen from Tunisia has gained much political support, being it closely linked to the construction of the SouthH2Corridor, a key project of both the Mattei Plan of the Italian government and the EU Global Gateway, the European Commission’s major infrastructure plan, as well as Snam’s ten-year infrastructure development plan.
‘Italy’s hydrogen strategy is heading in two possible directions, both of which are wrong,’ said Elena Gerebizza, author of the report. “In one case, it is strongly focusing on a false, failed and costly solution such as CCS. In the other, it is “embracing” the continuation of a colonial model with a “green” twist that would have negative repercussions, particularly for Tunisia. Whatever happens, the beneficiary of the government’s vague and imaginative guidelines is Snam, a corporation that is helping to perpetuate a fossil fuel based system with all the social, ecological and climatic injustices that have characterised it to date, shielding itself behind narratives of sustainability rooted in unsustainable and failed solutions such as hydrogen,” concluded Gerebizza.
