Netherlands allocates €450 million for underground hydrogen storage at Zuidwending

The Dutch cabinet has earmarked €450 million from the Climate Fund to build an underground hydrogen storage facility at Zuidwending. The project, called HyStock and run by EnergyStock together with Gasunie, will create four underground salt caverns and associated surface infrastructure to pump hydrogen in and out. Construction is expected to take 10–15 years, and the subsidy is intended to cover risks such as permitting delays, early‑year under‑use, and cushion‑gas price fluctuations.

VEMW, the hydrogen knowledge centre and lobby group, stresses that storage design directly affects hydrogen quality. It has drafted a quality standard requiring at least 99.9 % hydrogen purity and strict limits on contaminants, to meet the needs of refineries, ammonia producers and the chemical industry. Poor‑quality storage would force costly downstream purification.

Gasunie plans to invest about €8 billion in the energy transition by 2030, half of which is aimed at hydrogen projects. The government views hydrogen as the future replacement for natural gas, but the national hydrogen network is still in its early stages.