H4 Marseille Fos secures power supply for eSAF project in France
H4 Marseille Fos, a joint-venture between Hy2gen and French developer H2V, and EDF signed a strategic-partnership agreement July 16 that secures the vast majority of the power supply for the first Euro-Mediterranean electro sustainable aviation fuel (eSAF) project on a long-term basis.
At its core is a diversified, low-carbon electricity mix of renewable energy and nuclear power that will supply the production of eSAF at the Fos-sur-Mer site in France from 2032.
As part of this partnership, a 10-year nuclear-power supply was also concluded—the first of its kind that EDF has signed with a hydrogen and synthetic fuel producer.
With this project, H4 Marseille Fos supports the EU’s goal of reducing dependence on fossil-energy imports and ensuring a long-term, secure and reliable supply of sustainable fuel to the strategically important aviation sector.
Renewable fuels of nonbiological origin (RFNBO) fuels such as eSAF thus make a dual contribution to aviation’s climate footprint and to Europe’s security of supply.
With power supply now secured, the project takes an important step toward the final-investment decision (FID), targeted for 2028.
From 2032, the plant will produce 75,000 metric tons of eSAF annually using methanol-to-jet technology, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 84 percent compared to fossil kerosene—equivalent to around 240,000 tons of CO2 equivalent avoided each year.
The project makes a significant contribution to the European goal of achieving a 10 percent share of eSAF in aviation fuels by 2040 under the ReFuelEU aviation regulation while also supporting France’s revised national hydrogen strategy.
H4 Marseille Fos represents investments of 1.6-billion euros (USD$1.825 billion) in France and the creation of 165 direct jobs.
H4 Marseille Fos is designed around methanol-to-jet technology.
This also makes it possible to process eMethanol delivered by ship into eSAF on site.
This technological option is of strategic importance in the long term as it enables the import of eMethanol, which can, for example, be produced competitively in Africa, into Europe, making it usable there industrially.
This makes the project a contributor to the resilience of Europe’s fuel supply.
Rather than remaining one-sidedly dependent on fossil-energy imports, H4 Marseille Fos creates a flexible production chain that links European demand with globally available, cost-effective renewable resources—creating a robust, diversified supply base for SAF in Europe.
To produce RFNBO hydrogen, the EU delegated regulation 2023/1184 generally requires the use of renewable electricity.
For bidding zones with particularly low-carbon electricity generation, Article 4 of the regulation provides for a recognized exception: where the average carbon intensity of grid electricity is below 18 grams of CO2 equivalent per megajoule, grid electricity—combined with supplementary power-purchase agreements (PPAs) for renewable electricity and compliance with the temporal and geographic correlation criteria—can be counted as fully renewable.
The French mainland electricity grid meets this threshold—not least because of the high share of low-carbon nuclear power in its generation mix.
For H4 Marseille Fos, this means the combination of nuclear power sourced through EDF and additional renewable energy PPAs creates a solid regulatory basis for the RFNBO certification of the hydrogen produced at the site—and therefore for its eligibility toward European eSAF quotas.
At the same time, the high share of nuclear power in the French grid provides an exceptionally stable and predictable carbon footprint for the project.
Electricity accounts for around a third of the total production cost of eSAF.
For a project of this scale, a competitive and predictable power supply is therefore a key success factor.
H4 Marseille Fos relies on two complementary building blocks:
Renewable energy: Through EDF Power Solutions France, additional PPAs for electricity from renewable sources are being developed and incorporated into the project’s electricity mix.
Low-carbon nuclear power: Through the nuclear-power supply agreement, EDF is making available to H4 Marseille Fos a capacity of around 150 megawatts from its nuclear fleet—for 10 years starting from the beginning of commercial operations in 2032. This covers a substantial share of the annual power requirement of around 2.8 terawatt-hours on competitive and predictable terms.
The agreement provides for a balanced allocation of opportunities and risks relating to the electricity volumes actually produced, following the structure that EDF has already established in other agreements with industrial customers.“The signing of this contrat d’allocation de production nucléaire (CAPN) with EDF is a decisive step for the H4 project,” said Alexis Martinez, the managing director of H2V and project director for H4 Marseille Fos. “It secures, for 10 years, part of the largest cost component of an eSAF project—namely low-carbon electricity, which accounts for almost a third of total costs—and creates the long-term planning certainty that is indispensable for the final-investment decision. This is a strong signal for the entire aviation-decarbonization industry in France.”
Cyril Dufau-Sansot, CEO of Hy2gen, added, “With this CAPN, H4 Marseille Fos reaches a new milestone in the development of the first Euro-Mediterranean eSAF project. EDF is providing us with a long-term low-carbon power-supply framework—a necessary condition for the competitiveness of an eSAF project of this scale.”
