North Africa as an emerging green hydrogen hub: Algeria in focus

Abstract

North Africa is emerging as a pivotal geoeconomic link in transcontinental energy flows across Europe, Asia, and Africa. This study evaluates the regional energy landscape, renewable resource endowment, and existing infrastructure in North Africa to identify key conditions enabling development of a green-hydrogen hub, with emphasis on Algeria as a core contributor to a trans-Mediterranean hydrogen corridor. The analysis shows that abundant solar and wind resources, proximity to European markets, and extensive natural gas pipeline and port systems create favorable conditions for cost-competitive green hydrogen production and large-scale export. The dense domestic gas network and existing trans-Mediterranean pipelines in Algeria provide practical pathways for hydrogen transport. However, the region faces persistent challenges, including slow renewable energy deployment, limited grid flexibility, and geopolitical uncertainty. The study concludes that realizing hydrogen potential in North Africa requires firm local industrial demand, coordinated regional governance, and long-term offtake agreements with shared infrastructure investments with the European Union. The findings support evidence-based development of the North Africa–Europe hydrogen corridor and design of regional energy strategies.

Keywords

Hydrogen energy / Hydrogen hub / North Africa / Algeria / Hydrogen corridor

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qian He: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Software, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Chenyi Yao: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Software, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Conceptualization. Xiangling Kong: Validation, Methodology, Conceptualization. Naihua Wang: Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization. Kai Liang: Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as competing interests: Xiangling Kong and Kai Liang are employed by China Petroleum Technology and Development Corporation. Other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2023YFE0199100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52176191 and 52306255) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2023QE333). The authors also acknowledge the support provided by PipeChina Group.

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