Georgia Proposes Green Hydrogen Pipeline for Its Black Sea Corridor

Georgia is exploring a green hydrogen pipeline alongside its planned Black Sea submarine electricity cable, Deputy Minister of Economy Inga Pkhaladze announced at Baku Energy Week on June 1. At a proposed 950,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year, the addition would convert the four-country Green Energy Corridor into a dual-commodity export route carrying clean electricity and hydrogen to Europe simultaneously. The project has €2.3 billion in European Commission backing and still no Final Investment Decision.

The corridor behind that announcement has been in development since December 2022, when Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary signed a strategic partnership in Bucharest. What it still lacks is confirmed seabed data, contracted financing, and enough Azerbaijani renewable capacity to fill the electricity cable before any hydrogen pipeline enters the design. Pkhaladze’s statement at Baku advances a concept; the geophysical surveys needed to verify whether a parallel pipeline is physically viable haven’t started yet.

The Two-Layer Corridor

Two parallel projects share the Green Energy Corridor umbrella, and they’re often described as a single initiative.

The first is the Black Sea Submarine Cable (BSSC), a bilateral Georgia-Romania initiative supported by Hungary and Azerbaijan. This is an HVDC (high-voltage direct current) cable planned to run 1,195 kilometers from Anaklia on Georgia’s Black Sea coast to Constanta in Romania, approximately 1,115 of those kilometers submerged. The cable would operate at 525 kilovolts with a capacity between 1,000 and 1,300 megawatts. CESI (Consulenze Energia Sistemi e Innovazione), an Italian engineering consultancy, completed the project’s feasibility study in 2026. Geophysical and geotechnical surveys of the Black Sea seabed are next, with those studies expected to begin this year. At 1,195 kilometers, the cable would surpass the North Sea Link between England and Norway (720 km) as the world’s longest submarine power cable. Most of the Black Sea it would cross exceeds 2 kilometers in depth.

The second is the Green Energy Corridor (GEC), a four-country initiative involving Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary. The GEC targets 4,000 MW of total submarine transmission capacity across three cables, plus an overland route from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and Bulgaria. It is managed by GECO Power Company (Green Energy Corridor Power Company), a joint venture formed by the four countries’ transmission system operators (TSOs): AzerEnerji, Georgian State Electrosystem (GSE), CNTEE Transelectrica and MVM Electrical Works. The founding partnership agreement was signed in Bucharest on December 17, 2022. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen voiced support at the signing, and the EU subsequently earmarked approximately €2.3 billion for the cable through its Global Gateway infrastructure program.

Bulgaria has expressed interest in joining as a fifth member, with the four countries agreeing at their September 2024 ministerial meeting to begin the accession procedure. Both the BSSC and the GEC have been included in the portfolio of projects under ENTSO-E’s (European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity) Ten-Year Network Development Plan 2026 assessment, with cost-benefit results expected by year end.

The Hydrogen Pipeline Proposal

Pkhaladze’s June 1 statement added a specific volume to what had been a general aspiration. The proposed pipeline would carry roughly 950,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year, running in the same seabed corridor as the electricity cable and connecting South Caucasus production directly to European buyers.

The engineering requirements differ from those of an HVDC cable. A submarine power cable can follow seabed contours as long as burial or armoring is feasible, and the CESI feasibility study confirmed those conditions are workable for the electrical component. A hydrogen pipeline operating at the pressures required for long-distance transport needs straighter routing, specific materials tolerant of hydrogen embrittlement at depth, and more exacting seabed surveys. Running both systems in the same corridor means the upcoming geophysical and geotechnical studies must assess two distinct sets of structural requirements simultaneously, for a seabed predominantly over 2 kilometers deep.

Green hydrogen transport via pipeline is substantially cheaper per unit than liquefied hydrogen shipped by tanker at these volumes. For European buyers, a 950,000-tonne annual pipeline supply also competes on different economics than the ammonia-conversion-and-shipping routes developing from North Africa and the Middle East, where reconversion losses reduce final energy content.

Pkhaladze was precise about the sequencing at Baku: the seabed studies “will make it possible to finally assess the technical possibilities of laying both the energy cable and the hydrogen pipeline along the bottom of the Black Sea.” The pipeline’s viability remains an open question, contingent on what the surveys find.

Georgia’s Transit Calculus

The completed BSSC feasibility study, published by Georgian State Electrosystem, describes Georgia’s role in the electricity corridor precisely: “collector, transit country, and exporter.” Georgia aggregates its own hydropower, routes electricity transiting from Azerbaijan, and channels both toward Romania via the cable. By 2050, under the study’s modelling, the South Caucasus electricity share flowing through the cable would split roughly 43% Georgian and 39% Azerbaijani in origin.

Hydropower already accounts for more than 80% of Georgia’s domestic electricity generation. Wind potential, currently largely untapped, sits at an estimated 4,000 MW. The study projects Georgia’s export share growing as new generation comes online, but Azerbaijan’s output is the larger variable in the corridor’s near-term utilization rate.

Green Hydrogen as a Produced Commodity

The transit-host role is commercially limited. Electricity transiting through Georgia is Azerbaijani electricity; Georgia earns a fee on someone else’s commodity. Green hydrogen jointly produced by Azerbaijan and Georgia and transported through a shared pipeline is a different arrangement. If the joint production projects Pkhaladze referenced materialize, Georgia holds equity in the commodity itself. European offtakers structuring long-term supply contracts price supply security and counterparty concentration differently when two sovereign suppliers hold separate ownership stakes in a corridor than when one producer operates through a transit country.

Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov has stated publicly that wind energy contracts on Caspian offshore sites are linked to green hydrogen development plans. The supply-side buildout for a hydrogen pipeline therefore carries its own timeline and production dependencies, running in parallel with the cable’s financing and construction schedule.

The Hub Position and Its Preconditions

For Georgia to function as a genuine clean-energy hub, three conditions need to align at roughly the same time:

• The electricity cable must be operational, providing the physical infrastructure corridor a hydrogen pipeline would share and the commercial track record that supports its financing
• Azerbaijan must scale its renewable capacity to fill both the cable and a hydrogen pipeline beyond domestic demand, a buildout that has already missed one government-stated deadline
• EU offtake for Black Sea green hydrogen must be contracted at prices competitive with North African, Middle Eastern and domestic European hydrogen routes, none of which are settled as of mid-2026

The cable is the necessary prior condition for all three. Without a functioning submarine link, the hydrogen pipeline has no corridor to occupy and no commercial framework to justify its capital cost.

Does Azerbaijan Have Enough Renewables?

The corridor is routinely described as a European energy security initiative. It’s also a bet on Azerbaijan accelerating a renewable energy transition that has historically lagged its stated timelines.

Fossil fuels account for approximately 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and up to 50% of its gross domestic product, per International Energy Agency data. The country set a 20%-renewables target for 2020 and fell well short. SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic) created a dedicated renewables subsidiary, SOCAR Green, in 2023. The government’s current stated target is 4 GW of renewable capacity in place by 2027, with 80% earmarked for export. Azerbaijan’s total renewable resource includes roughly 27 GW onshore and up to 157 GW on Caspian offshore sites, according to the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies; contracts with international wind developers for four Caspian sites were in progress as of 2024.

The 4 GW target by 2027 represents a substantial departure from Azerbaijan’s current renewable base. Azerbaijan’s first utility-scale solar facility, the 230-megawatt Garadagh plant developed by Abu Dhabi’s Masdar, was the country’s initial large-scale renewable installation. That leaves approximately 3,770 MW to commission in about two years, with 80% earmarked for export.

A cable viability study by the German Economic Team, an economic advisory group that has analyzed the Black Sea cable’s commercial prospects, found that with 2,000 MW of export-oriented wind and 500 MW of solar from Azerbaijan, the cable would achieve utilization above 92%. The same assessment found the simple payback period stretches past 40 years if Azerbaijan’s renewables buildout falls short. Current ENTSO-E price forecasts also project Turkey as a more attractive electricity export market than Romania through 2030 (84 EUR/MWh versus 64 EUR/MWh), meaning the cable’s commercial case requires long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with European offtakers locked in before construction, since spot market pricing at commissioning would leave the project financially exposed.

Capital Has Not Followed the Agreements

The Financing Structure

Four governments, a joint venture company, and ten ministerial meetings have produced a detailed governance framework. Contracted financing hasn’t kept pace.

• €2.3 billion earmarked by the European Commission for the cable component, conditional on project approval and a Final Investment Decision
• $35 million World Bank loan approved in May 2024 for Phase 1 of Georgia’s ESPIRE program (Enhancing Energy Security through Power Interconnection and Renewable Energy), covering institutional capacity-building and onshore grid upgrades; Phase 3 financing for the cable itself is conditioned on an FID being reached first
• 4,000 MW total GEC transmission target across the four-country consortium, with no Final Investment Decision reached on any portion of the project

At COP29 in Baku in November 2024, the four core countries acknowledged openly that funding uncertainty was creating delays. The consortium had been pursuing Project of Mutual Interest (PMI) status from the EU, which would unlock priority access to European financing mechanisms and accelerated regulatory procedures.

The ENTSO-E Milestone

In late 2025, ENTSO-E confirmed that both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Caspian-Black Sea-European Green Energy Corridor met the eligibility criteria for inclusion in the TYNDP 2026 project portfolio. The portfolio carries 178 transmission initiatives, all undergoing cost-benefit assessment throughout 2026, per the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry’s TYNDP 2026 inclusion announcement. Results are expected by year end. A favorable ENTSO-E outcome would qualify the corridor for formal EU priority status, unlocking access to European funding mechanisms.

The Caspian-Black Sea Green Energy Corridor is an extremely ambitious initiative.

Tatiana Mitrova, a research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told NE Global Media in March 2025, adding that the project’s 2029 commissioning target remained without a Final Investment Decision at the time. As of June 2026, both facts remain unchanged.

The seabed geophysical and geotechnical surveys needed to confirm whether a hydrogen pipeline can share the corridor with the electricity cable are due to begin this year. The ENTSO-E cost-benefit results are expected by year end. The Final Investment Decision follows both.