Industrial decarbonization in N-W Europe depends on rapidly scaling hydrogen as a complementary energy carrier - especially across major industrial clusters in The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Yet hydrogen supply from renewables will be inherently variable, making security of supply a central challenge for the emerging value chain across borders. HY3+ provides an independent, cross-border assessment of planned transmission roll-outs by national TSO’s when evaluated as one interconnected system, and the role of underground storage on short-term and seasonal mismatches.
The study develops a physics-based representation of the hydrogen infrastructure across the countries and applies a dynamic gas-network solver coupled with underground gas storage model to simulate hourly operation under intermittent supply and demand. The resulting analyses quantify pressures, flows, velocities, and storage dynamics, revealing system wide transport constraints, flexibility requirements, and operational limitations.

The results demonstrate that an interconnected hydrogen infrastructure delivers significant benefits and proves essential enabling robust cross border hydrogen value chain supporting industrial decarbonization. Furthermore, results show that currently foreseen underground storage development is insufficient to prevent curtailment of flow. Achieving a balanced and resilient system will require additional storage flexibilities and strategies.. Together, these insights provide critical guidance for infrastructure planning toward the 2030/2033 and 2035 horizons.