Europe's Largest Green Hydrogen Project to Reuse Coal-fired Plant

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--A consortium led by Sweden's Vattenfall (Stockholm) has teamed up to repurpose a recently shuttered coal-fired plant in Hamburg, Germany, into a hydrogen plant powered by wind and solar.

With the help of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Royal Dutch Shell Plc (NYSE:RDS.A) and local utility Warme Hamburg, Vattenfall wants to use the Moorburg plant to build a 100-megawatt (MW) electrolyser to create hydrogen by 2025. This would make Moorburg one of the largest proposed hydrogen plants in Europe, a region where there is a growing number of large-scale green hydrogen projects in the pipeline. Last June, Industrial Info reported that Germany had pledged to spend 9 billion euro ($10.1 billion) to become the world's leading user and producer of green hydrogen. In its National Hydrogen Strategy for Germany, the government stated that hydrogen is key for decarbonising key sectors such as the steel and chemical industries and the transport sector. For additional information, see June 30, 2020, article - Germany Bets $10 Billion on Clean Hydrogen Strategy.

Until the end of 2020, Moorburg was the largest power plant in northern Germany, with two units capable of generating more than 1,650 megawatts (MW) of electricity and up to 650 MW of district heating. A revamp that was completed in 2016 turned the plant into a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, but Vatttenfall applied for the German government's auction for the nationwide coal phase-out plan which saw the plant shuttered last December.

Vattenfall said that along with a scalable, 100-MW electrolyser there will be further development of the site into a so-called "Green Energy Hub". This will include how the existing site can be used for the production of energy from renewable sources, potential logistics and storage options.

"The production of fossil free hydrogen is one key to the decarbonisation of the industry and the transport sectors," explained Andreas Regnell, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategic Development, Vattenfall. "Vattenfall wants to enable fossil-free living within one generation and we have high ambitions to grow within renewable energy production in the markets where we operate."

Michael Westhagemann, Minister for Economy and Innovation of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, added: "There is no better location in Hamburg for a scalable electrolyser of this size. Via the 380-kV connection and the connection to Brunsbüttel, we have direct access to the supply of green electricity from wind power - and thus the possibility of actually producing green hydrogen in relevant quantities."

In related news, Total (NYSE:TOT) and ENGIE have partnered to design, develop, build and operate the "Masshylia'' project, France's largest renewable hydrogen production site at the La Mède biorefinery in the south of the country. Powered by solar farms with a total capacity of more than 100 MW, the 40-MW electrolyser will produce 5 tonnes of green hydrogen per day to meet the needs of the biofuel production process at the La Mède biorefinery, offsetting 15,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. Construction of the facility will start in 2022, following the completion of the advanced engineering study, with a view to production starting in 2024.

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