Plans to establish a hydrogen exchange in the Netherlands are gathering pace, with a group of about 40 companies and organisations scheduled to meet next week to discuss progress and the ongoing definition of the project, as well as possible next steps including trading simulations. The group includes oil and gas companies, energy utilities and financial institutions. 

“We need a market, that is for sure,” project leader Bert den Ouden tells Hydrogen Economist. The full exchange could launch in around 2027, according to current timelines, although some trading at individual ports could start before then.

The initiative, backed by four Dutch ports and gas infrastructure company Gasunie, seeks to establish a trading hub using existing Dutch natural gas infrastructure with third-party access rules. 

"Because we have a sort of double gas infrastructure in the Netherlands we can dedicate a certain part of it to hydrogen and still leave the existing natural gas infrastructure intact" den Ouden, exchange project director

Den Ouden says the Netherlands is well-positioned to create a hydrogen market, which would share similarities with the highly liquid TTF natural gas trading hub, as one of the starting points for a European system. 

“Because we have a sort of double gas infrastructure in the Netherlands we can dedicate a certain part of it to hydrogen and still leave the existing natural gas infrastructure intact,” he says. “We can have our cake and eat it, so to speak.”

The market would trade hydrogen from multiple sources, including locally produced green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, the wider European market, and imports from around the globe. 

Global trade

The multiple sources flowing into the hub would allow the market to smooth out variations in green hydrogen supply driven by intermittent renewable power and use storage to ultimately produce baseload supply to the grid, den Ouden says. 

“Green hydrogen will not be there on a continuous basis, this will create time variations,” he says.

 The exchange platform would also consider a pilot market for guarantee of origin (GOO) certificates raised against all hydrogen entering the hub. Hydrogen producers will get revenue from hydrogen sales as well as the GOOs, den Ouden says. 

Immediate challenges for the initiative include policy issues still to be addressed around the certification of certain segments. “It is essential that we make a system with certificates which support all sources of hydrogen,’ den Ouden adds. “At the moment, only part of this is supported, especially in the transport sector, and for imported low carbon hydrogen there is not a policy yet.” 

“It is a policy challenge, we are talking about this continuously with policymakers at various levels.”

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Author: Stuart Penson