Presentation short abstract

Building on the European Green Deal’s promotion of Green Hydrogen (GrH2), we argue that the hydrogen frontier reconfigures rather than transcends the historical architectures of fossil capitalism and colonial modernity. Here we examine material and financial spatial aspects of H2Med infrastructures.

Presentation long abstract

Building on the European Green Deal’s promotion of Green Hydrogen (GrH2), we argue that the hydrogen frontier reconfigures rather than transcends the historical architectures of fossil capitalism and colonial modernity.

The paper examines the H2Med corridor, co-developed by ENAGÁS (Spain), REN (Portugal), and GRTgaz and Teréga (France), envisioned as an axis in the European Hydrogen Backbone. Still largely in its design phase, H2Med already mobilizes substantial political, financial and territorial commitments that reveal its capacity to reorder socioecological relations. The province of Huelva in southern Spain illustrates the entanglements and frictions generated by this process. Hydrogen development intersects with longstanding conflicts over aquifer depletion, land access, and industrial pollution, while also introducing new uncertainties related to chemical waste, brine disposal and intensified energy demands. These overlapping dynamics show how H2Med produces hybrid and contradictory spaces where green infrastructures merge with fossil legacies, agrarian livelihoods and ecological vulnerabilities.

A central contribution of the paper is to highlight a paradox at the heart of the hydrogen frontier. Although H2Med is framed as a project enhancing European energy sovereignty, a significant proportion of the capital enabling the hydrogen transition originates from sovereign wealth funds of states historically constituted as fossil peripheries within the twentieth-century international oil order. In this sense, the financing of H2Med exemplifies how Southern capital subsidizes Northern energy transitions, even as Southern territories continue to serve as extraction zones for renewable and fossil resources. The hydrogen transition thus rearticulates, rather than resolves, the geopolitical and financial logics of fossil modernity.