Lithuania’s energy regulator has signed off on a decade of spending that tilts the country’s gas grid decisively towards hydrogen. On 1 October 2026, the National Energy Regulatory Council (VERT) approved Amber Grid’s investment plan for 2026–2035, worth more than €1.6 billion in total. Of that, €1.2 billion is earmarked for hydrogen infrastructure, against €438 million for the existing natural gas transmission system.
That ratio is the real story. Lithuania’s gas transmission operator expects to spend almost three times as much on a fuel that barely flows through its pipes today as on the network that keeps the country supplied.
What the money is for
The gas portion is the conventional half of the plan: reconstructing main pipelines and modernising the Jauniūnai and Panevėžys compressor stations. Amber Grid’s chief executive, Nemunas Biknius, said in a statement that the investments aim to keep the transmission system safe and reliable while preparing for a long-term energy transformation.
The hydrogen half is more speculative. The €1.2 billion figure assumes Lithuania produces between 2.25 and 10.7 TWh of hydrogen a year by 2035, a range so wide that the low end is less than a quarter of the high end. It also assumes Lithuania takes part in the Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor, a planned pipeline of roughly 2,500 km running from Finland through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to Germany.
Lithuania’s stretch would include around 350 km of main pipeline plus more than 200 km of branch line from the north-west of the country. If the country builds further branches to serve domestic users, hydrogen spending could rise by about another €0.5 billion, according to the plan as reported in the Lithuanian press.
A corridor still on paper
The corridor is not yet a firm project. Six transmission operators, from Finland’s Gasgrid to Germany’s ONTRAS, are still running feasibility studies, part-funded by up to €6.8 million from the EU, with results due in 2027. Commercial operation is pencilled in for around 2033.
There are early signs of appetite. A call for interest earlier this year drew 93 responses from 81 companies, covering 108 projects across the six countries. Amber Grid has also hired EY to produce an economic analysis of the Lithuanian section, including its business model and cost-benefit case, over six months.
Why it matters
Regulatory approval gives Amber Grid a mandate, not a guarantee. Most of the hydrogen money only gets spent if the corridor moves from study to construction and if enough producers and buyers turn up to justify it. Whether those investments eventually feed through to gas transmission tariffs, or are softened by EU funding, is a question the plan leaves open.
For now, Lithuania has placed a clear bet: that the Baltic gas grid of the 2030s will carry hydrogen south to Central Europe. The next 18 months of studies will show how much of that €1.2 billion turns into steel in the ground.
