Europe’s quest for access to more green hydrogen regained momentum on January 21, 2025, when a Joint Declaration of Intent (JDoI) was signed in Rome by representatives from Germany, Algeria, Italy, Austria, and Tunisia. The agreement concerns the Southern Hydrogen Corridor project, a proposed pipeline network for transporting gaseous hydrogen from North Africa to Europe. Spanning up to 4,000km, this mega-project has been described as one of “the most important renewable energy projects of our time” by Philib Nimmermann, Germany’s Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. One of the most revealing remarks in Nimmermann’s statement was: “Today, we are strengthening this new bridge between North Africa and Europe through the Joint Declaration of Intent. This enables us to utilize North Africa’s immense potential for renewable energy.” His words make the project’s underlying objective clear: securing access to North Africa’s abundant wind and solar energy along with its land and water while ensuring that profits and primary commodities flow to industrial centers in Europe.

Recently, more than 90 organizations worldwide signed a joint statement denouncing the South H2 Corridor as a new colonial project that exacerbates global inequalities and reinforces extractivist dynamics, benefiting Europe at the expense of local communities. This is not the first mega-project of its kind. The ELMED interconnection between Italy and Tunisia is another large-scale infrastructure project to export “green electricity” from North Africa to Europe. Tunisia, through its public institutions, has taken approximately €390 million in loans to finance its share of the project, further deepening the country’s debt crisis. In 2023, data showed that the value of outstanding public debt continued to rise, reaching 79.8% of Tunisia’s GDP. Ironically, Tunisia’s internal energy crisis makes such export-driven projects highly questionable. The country faces a severe energy deficit: as of January 2024, the country relied on imports for 74% of its energy needs, and renewable energy sources accounted for barely 5% of the national energy mix. The export-oriented hydrogen projects won’t improve this situation because they will absorb renewable electricity capacities and, thereby, decelerate the domestic energy transition.

Investing in energy export infrastructure, especially through debt financing, is highly unwise when Tunisia itself struggles to meet its domestic energy needs. Moreover, these projects primarily benefit the private sector, particularly multinational corporations such as TotalEnergies and ACWA Power, which signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) last year to develop green hydrogen production. Through the Southern Hydrogen Corridor, these companies will export hydrogen to Europe, helping German and other European industries meet their decarbonization commitments while shifting the responsibility and burden of climate action onto countries in the South.

The rhetoric of a “green transition” promoted by European leaders only reinforces this extractive logic. “Green baby green,” were the words of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in response to Trump’s push for greater investment in fossil fuels. Unlike the US approach, Spain and other EU countries are committed (so far) to the European Green Deal and the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Under this framework, the EU’s 2020 Hydrogen Strategy and the REPowerEU plan aim to promote renewable and low-carbon hydrogen, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels and decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors.

The EU sees green hydrogen as a silver bullet for decarbonization. However, it can only produce half of its projected needs in 2030 and plans to import around 10 million tons of green hydrogen from other countries to meet the shortfall. This approach shifts the burden of decarbonization onto the Global South while locking exporting countries into carbon-intensive economic models. Instead of using renewables for domestic energy transitions, they are pressured to prioritize hydrogen exports.

This economic model perpetuates economic unequal exchange where profits, resources, and technological leadership remain concentrated in the Global North. Ironically, this reality is clearly acknowledged in a report by the German development agency GIZ, produced in collaboration with Tunisia’s Ministry of Energy, Industry, and Mines, and published on April 21, 2021. The report, on Tunisia’s “Power-to-X” opportunities, states: “If green hydrogen is produced using imported technologies and exported as a raw material, with the further processing steps located in the recipient countries, this would create limited jobs and value in Tunisia.”

This is precisely what is happening today: profit-driven corporations are signing MoUs with the Tunisian government to establish green hydrogen production for export. This export-driven strategy, backed and funded by GIZ, forms the core of Tunisia’s national hydrogen strategy, which is further entrenching the country in an extractivist model rather than fostering a just energy transition. The Clean Industrial Deal, the EU’s strategy to decarbonize industry, support clean tech, and enhance competitiveness through circularity and lower energy costs, was published on February 26, 2025, and states: “Every person, community, and business should benefit from the clean transition. The Clean Industrial Deal therefore commits to a just transition that delivers quality jobs and empowers people.”

However, this promise applies only to businesses and citizens of the North. For the rest of us in southern countries, the so-called transition locks our economies into the lowest tiers of the value chain, while imposing severe socio-ecological costs, particularly concerning land, water, and energy resources.

In an interview in June 2024, the Director General of TotalEnergies in Tunisia claimed that hydrogen production would rely on seawater desalination rather than exploiting the country’s already scarce freshwater resources. Yet, Tunisia has not mastered the desalination technology, which may create more dependencies, and if used at a large scale, may also come with significant environmental consequences. The brine byproduct from desalination threatens marine biodiversity and endangers the blue economy.

Green hydrogen itself may not be inherently problematic, but the way it is being introduced in many countries of the Global South reinforces a new colonial economic model, one that is based on accumulation by dispossession, where wealth and benefits are extracted while costs are externalized onto already vulnerable communities. While this extractive model unfolds on a national and international level, it is in places like Gabes that its social and ecological consequences are felt most acutely. In southern Tunisia, the first pilot project for producing green ammonia from green hydrogen is set to be implemented in Gabes, funded by a grant from Germany’s KFW Bank. Gabes, a coastal city with one of the largest industrial bases in Tunisia, has been a hub for fertilizer production since 1972. Currently, Tunisia imports 100% of its ammonia from Spain and Russia to support its phosphate-based fertilizer industry. Although local ammonia production may appear to reduce import dependency, this project remains experimental and is unlikely to significantly lessen Tunisia’s reliance on imported ammonia. The primary focus of Tunisia’s national hydrogen strategy continues to be the export of raw hydrogen, rather than addressing the country’s domestic industrial needs.

Nevertheless, “greening” a chemical industry that has caused an ecocide in Gabes raises many eyebrows. It also triggers concerns from the local population and environmentalists, who fear that these green hydrogen/ammonia project announcements may be the prelude to more environmental disasters.

For more than 50 years, Gabes has suffered from severe pollution caused by the Tunisian Chemical Group’s operations. Against this backdrop, the local population, civil society groups, and ultras movements strongly oppose any new projects linked to the chemical industry. On December 2, 2024, an event titled “Gabes: A Hub for Green Hydrogen Production and Its Derivatives” was attended by high-ranking officials, the French ambassador, and representatives from French corporations TotalEnergies and Hydrogen France. In response, local ultras groups staged protests the following day, blocking roads to express their rejection of the announced project. Their stance was clear: Gabes has endured decades of environmental degradation and suffering, and they refuse to go through the same cycle again, even in the name of so-called “sustainability.”The Gabes green hydrogen project is closely tied to the continuing operations of the Tunisian Chemical Group, which contradicts the 2017 government decision to dismantle and relocate the industry away from the city. The Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Industry has pushed forward with this plan without consulting the local community or allowing any public debate on the matter. In response, local civil society organizations issued a statement and circulated a petition directed at the President, to which there has been no response. Additionally, movements like the Stop Pollution Movement, which has been leading the counter-hegemonic narrative in the city over the past year, issued a statement on March 6, 2025 denouncing the unjust measures taken by the Ministry of Mines, Energy, and Industry. These include the removal of phosphogypsum from the hazardous materials list and the refusal to halt the implementation of a green ammonia plant in the city. All of this exerted pressure on parliamentary deputies representing Gabes, who then applied pressure on the Minister by questioning her during a parliamentary session on March 12, 2025.

On April 24 of this year, marking the International Day Against Imperialism and Colonialism, militants from the Stop Pollution Movement and the Working Group for Energy Democracy organized a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Mines, Energy, and Industry in Tunisia. The protest brought together members of the General Union of Tunisian Students, trade unionists, progressive groups, leftist political parties, and climate justice activists. They denounced the export-oriented green hydrogen project, the commodification and privatization of the energy sector, and the way the energy transition has been hijacked by multinational corporations, resulting in land grabbing and threatening Tunisia’s energy sovereignty. Notably, this year’s protest attracted a larger turnout than last year’s action in front of the GIZ energy cluster, reflecting the organizers’ intensified mobilization to confront and expose energy colonialism and imperialism on this symbolic day.

If Tunisia’s current path locks it deeper into dependency, what alternative future might we imagine? In contrast to the current trajectory of export-oriented hydrogen strategies, we should strive to fulfill the vision of Cheikh Anta Diop, the renowned Senegalese historian and Pan African political thinker, who offered a radically different path rooted in sovereignty, solidarity, and scientific leadership. Rather than positioning Africa as a site of cheap resource extraction for Europe’s energy transition, his call remains urgent today: to build African green industries that prioritize local needs, foster regional integration, and share innovation on equal terms, not as raw commodities but as contributions to a just and decolonial energy future.

There is an urgent need to develop and push for energy sovereignty, as well as to open a serious discussion about the energy question in Tunisia and across other African countries. This includes the necessity of building sovereign and democratic alternative pathways, rooted in the struggle for public ownership and energy justice.

Trade unions and progressive forces must play a central role in advocating for a real green industrialization in the Global South, which challenges the imperial powers scrambling to exploit our resources for their interests, while trapping us in an infernal cycle of economic, financial, and technological dependency.

At the local level, we must support grassroots resistance and amplify debates around critical issues, such as the legalised land grabs carried out by multinational corporations. It is essential to forge strong connections between trade unions and the climate/environmental justice movement to build a united front. For the climate justice movement in the Global North, there is a pressing responsibility to go beyond techno-optimism and market-based fixes. The focus must shift toward meaningful internationalist climate action that confronts imperialism (sometimes disguised under a green cloak) and dismantles the dynamics of neocolonialism.