Presentation short abstract

The Basque Hydrogen Corridor (BH2C) is supposed to decarbonize the industrial and energy sectors of the Basque Country by 2050. We examine the socio-metabolic reconfigurations it drives and the risks of a transition that may reproduce extractivism while creating new green sacrifice zones.

Presentation long abstract

The BH2C, driven by energy and petrochemical companies such as Repsol and its subsidiary Petronor, is attracting massive amounts of public and private investment, proyecting mega-infrastructures such as electrolyzers and hydrogen pipelines, as well as research centers and projects focused on optimizing electrolysis and transportation. Promoted as one of the keys of the energy transition, green hydrogen exemplifies the broader shift toward “low-carbon” infrastructures that reorganize socio-metabolic relations (Martínez-Alier 2009). However, despite the enormous capital investment, there are significant doubts regarding the energy efficiency and profitability of green hydrogen, along with growing concerns about its volatility, toxicity, and overall environmental impact.

While green hydrogen narratives push forward its expansion, the high energy and material demand (Kane & Gil 2022), as well as the economic costs of production bring into question its viability and desirability. Our research follows the infrastructural developments of the BH2C and their implications for the local community and ecosystems of Meatzaldea (mining zone in Basque), a historical mining region which we consider a “sacrifice zone” (Juskus 2023). We are particularly interested in approaching the entanglement of political, energetic and economic struggle in the region from an ecofeminist and political ecology perspective that analyzes the power relations at play, seeking to better understand who benefits from its deployment or who is the transition for. In short, we aim to study the type of energy transition this "hydrogen valley" is promoting and its socio-ecological implications.