European gas firms prime pipelines for hydrogen highway

As world leaders hammered out a deal last week to slow climate change, gas engineer Michele Ricciardi was digging into a practical problem: How thousands of miles of pipelines across Italy and Europe can safely carry hydrogen.

The Italian is at the forefront of gas carriers' efforts to prepare for a lower carbon future: If fossil fuels are phased out in coming decades, natural gas companies believe that should not mean the infrastructure that carries them must go too. They want to repurpose pipelines to carry zero-emissions hydrogen after countries wean themselves off natural gas.

The effort by nearly two dozen companies reflects the accelerating pace of planning taking place in the global oil and gas industry, from drillers to refiners, keen to adapt as governments and activists ramp up the pressure to slash greenhouse gases. Besides practical preparation, the transition puts firms into competition with other energy sources for funding, even as they invest billions of euros in markets they can't predict.

The hydrogen project - involving Italy's Snam SpA , Spain's Enagas S.A. and Germany's Open Grid Europe (OGE) among others – would rely on vast solar farms as far flung as the Sahara desert to create the energy needed to produce hydrogen from water.