• The project has a total budget of €7.04 million, of which the Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) is funding €5.47 million, within the framework of Mission 6 of the Science and Innovation Missions Programme 2025, aimed at strengthening national technological capabilities for strategic autonomy in security and defence.
  
  

• GUARDIANE-Q is a consortium bringing together five companies: Trinity Energy Storage, H2B2 Electrolysis Technologies, Hydra Space, Plexus Tech and Quside. Furthermore, it has the scientific support of eight academic and research entities, including CIEMAT, the National Hydrogen Centre (CNH2) and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), among others.
  
  

• The project will run between 2026 and 2029 and will investigate and validate, in controlled environments, five complementary technology lines including advanced risk analysis, multi-sensory monitoring, distributed intelligence, resilient satellite communications and post-quantum cryptography.
  
  

The GUARDIANE-Q consortium has formally started its activities as an industrial research project aimed at designing and validating an advanced security architecture for critical underground renewable hydrogen storage infrastructures. This initiative, a pioneer in Spain due to its comprehensive approach to security, will be developed over four years, between 2026 and 2029.

GUARDIANE-Q is formed by Trinity Energy Storage (coordinating entity), H2B2 Electrolysis Technologies, Hydra Space, Plexus Tech and Quside. The consortium also has the scientific-technical collaboration of a network of eight specialised entities and units: CIEMAT, National Hydrogen Centre (CNH2), EURECAT Technology Centre, IKERLAN Technology Centre, National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), Technical University of Madrid (through the Ignacio da Riva Microgravity University Institute UPM-ETSIAE-IDR and the UPM-ETSIT-GR Radiation Group), the Rock Mechanics Laboratory of the University of A Coruña (UDC-LaMeRoc) and the José María de Madariaga Official Laboratory (UPM-LOM).

The GUARDIANE-Q initiative has a total budget of €7.04 million, of which the CDTI is contributing €5.47 million, and is part of Mission 6 of the Science and Innovation Missions Programme 2025, which funds projects aimed at building capacity for strategic autonomy in security and defence.

GUARDIANE-Q emerges in the context of the Aljarafe Project, an initiative by Trinity Energy Storage that seeks to convert depleted natural gas fields into Spain's first underground green hydrogen storage facility. The Aljarafe project has recently been included in the provisional list of the European hydrogen network planning drawn up by ENTSOG (European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas), a preliminary step towards being declared a Project of Common European Interest.

GUARDIANE-Q lines of work

Storing renewable hydrogen in depleted natural gas fields is a technically viable option with a lower environmental impact than building new installations. The focus of GUARDIANE-Q is on defining and validating a specific security framework for these infrastructures that ensures the highest standards of physical, environmental and digital protection.

To address this challenge, the project works on five complementary technical lines:

• The first defines and analyses physical, environmental, operational and digital risk scenarios as the analytical basis for the design of protection systems.

• The second develops multi-sensory monitoring systems combined with analysis algorithms capable of detecting early warning signs of anomalies.

• The third addresses the development of a distributed intelligence platform with an edge-cloud architecture to integrate data flows, trigger alerts and support decision-making in the event of incidents.

• The fourth investigates sovereign and resilient satellite communication solutions that guarantee data transmission even in the event of degradation or loss of terrestrial networks.

• The fifth applies post-quantum cryptography and quantum entropy generation to protect supervision and control systems against emerging cyber threats, a particularly unique line in the European industrial context.

All of these technologies will be validated in controlled or representative environments (not under commercial operation), with the aim of generating results that are transferable to other critical energy storage infrastructures beyond hydrogen.