Greening the European economy at the expense of other world regions? Tracing the EUs quest for green hydrogen in Chile

The European Unions (EU) green agenda, embedded in the European Green Deal, is promoted as a strategy to tackle intertwined crises of climate change, energy insecurity, and profit overaccumulation in a tense geopolitical environment. Central to this agenda is the large-scale deployment of green hydrogen (GH2) as both an energy storage solution and a decarbonisation pathway for hard-to-abate sectors. While the EU sets ambitious targets of 10 million tons of domestic GH2 production and an equivalent volume of imports by 2030, these goals rely heavily on establishing supply partnerships with countries in the Global South. This article interrogates the EUs GH2 strategy through the lens of dependency theory, focusing on Chile, a country with vast renewable energy potential and positioned by the EU as a trusted ally. Drawing on eleven expert interviews conducted in Europe and Chile as well as a qualitative content analysis of policy documents, we analyse how EU-Chile hydrogen cooperation materialises in politico-economic practice. Our findings suggest that, while framed as mutually beneficial, the EUs GH2 agenda risks reinforcing Chiles peripheral role in the global division of labour and locking the country into resource-based specialisation. We conclude that the emerging hydrogen partnership exemplifies both the opportunities and dependency-related pitfalls of the EUs green transition when transposed onto North-South relations.