Morocco’s Gaia Energy teams up with Spain’s HyDeal on green hydrogen exports: Moroccan hydrogen developer Gaia Future Energy signed a partnership agreement with Spanish hydrogen provider HyDeal that will see them form a JV — HyDeal Africa — with the aim of transporting green hydrogen from Gaia Future Energy projects in Morocco and Mauritania to Europe, according to a company statement (pdf). The financials of the agreement and a timeline on the launch of HyDeal Africa’s operational launch were not disclosed.

The details: The JV intends to transport 1 mn tons of green hydrogen from Morocco by 2030 and 5 mn tons of green hydrogen from Mauritania by 2035 to Europe, the statement notes. The hydrogen sourced from North Africa will be transported through a subsea coastal hydrogen pipeline connecting Mauritania and Morocco to Spain, and will leverage opportunities provided by the H2Med pipeline project to connect with more by 2030, the statement notes. Consultations between Gaia Energy, HyDeal, European institutions and governments on both sides of the Mediterranean sea are already underway on the hydrogen interconnector.

Next steps: HyDeal Africa will work on conducting a feasibility study on the design and construction of a subsea hydrogen pipeline connecting Mauritania and Morocco to Spain with the first phase of the study set for a reveal in November during COP28, the statement notes.

EU needs a lot of green H2O: The partnership agreement falls under the umbrella of Europe’s RepowerEU plan of importing 10 mn gallons of green hydrogen by the end of the decade. HyDeal plans to produce 3.6 mn tons of green hydrogen annually by 2030.

Gaia Energy has been making moves: The company — which has an 80 GW pipeline of hydrogen projects under development — signed an agreement back in March with China Energy Engineering Corporation and Saudi Arabia’s Ajlan & Bros to jointly build a green hydrogen production facility in Morocco set to produce some 1.4 mn tons of the green ammonia and 320k tons of green hydrogen annually once operational. Back in November, Gaia Energy signed an agreement to use Israeli firm H2Pro’s electrolyzer tech to accelerate its green hydrogen generational capacity for export to Europe.