At NTT Analysis Improve 2026, I met the workforce behind NTT Anode Vitality’s analysis on hydrogen pipeline transportation. They confirmed me a bit of the resin-based pipe the corporate plans to insert into current underground telecom conduits, which helped me higher perceive how the know-how shall be deployed.
Hydrogen is usually offered as a promising clear vitality supply, however transporting it safely and affordably continues to be a serious problem. It’s not a major gas supply within the regular sense, however an vitality provider that may be produced from water, biomass, or fossil fuels. When utilized in gas cells to generate electrical energy, it produces solely water and warmth, not CO2, on the level of use, which is one cause it stays central to many decarbonization plans.
That’s particularly related in Japan, which has been investing closely in hydrogen as a part of its longer-term push towards carbon neutrality, better vitality safety, and industrial management in fuel-cell and hydrogen-related applied sciences.
NTT Anode Vitality is engaged on an answer that would assist decrease one in every of hydrogen’s greatest infrastructure limitations by utilizing current underground infrastructure reasonably than relying completely on newly constructed hydrogen pipelines.
The thought is to route hydrogen by means of resin-based pipes inserted into current utility or telecom ducts. That issues as a result of constructing new hydrogen pipelines is pricey, and the researchers defined that excavation is a serious a part of the fee. By avoiding large-scale digging, NTT believes it will probably make hydrogen supply extra sensible and less expensive.
Security is a central a part of the challenge. In response to the corporate’s supplies and the researchers’ dialogue, the system combines hermetic transport pipes with monitoring applied sciences, together with strain and hydrogen sensors, in addition to optical-fiber-based leak detection. The workforce additionally mentioned the versatile pipe design makes it simpler to put in inside current underground pathways. Testing is already underway within the Tokyo space.
NTT initiatives that the know-how may finally cut back preliminary prices by about half in contrast with standard steel-pipe provide strategies, whereas operating prices may fall by roughly one-third. The broader purpose is to assist a hydrogen provide chain that’s safer, extra scalable, and extra economically real looking.
The know-how was additionally demonstrated at Expo 2025 Osaka, the place NTT put in a renewable-energy energy plant at its pavilion to supply hydrogen on web site. That hydrogen-linked vitality was saved in a Panasonic gas cell and transported by means of a 200-meter underground pipeline from the NTT pavilion to the Panasonic Group pavilion, the place it powered LED lighting.
Panasonic illuminated pavilion on the Osaka 2025 Expo – a part of the NTT / Panasonic hydrogen infrastructure – Photograph Courtesy of Panasonic
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