UK, Netherlands announce plans for offshore wind renewable hydrogen

LONDON (ICIS)–French hydrogen company Lhyfe and the UK’s Centrica have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the development of offshore renewable hydrogen in the UK.

In addition, the Dutch government announced 20 March a 500MW electrolyser project based in the Groningen area.

Lhyfe and Centrica will jointly collaborate on a pilot renewable hydrogen production site located in the Southern North Sea.

The two companies will seek to establish that “an end-to-end hydrogen production, storage, and distribution system is possible” it said in the press release.

“The energy firms will also examine an additional partnership to deploy the technology at commercial scale alongside offshore wind electricity production” the press release also said.

Martin Scargill, Managing Director of Centrica Storage, said in the press release that “our long-term ambition is for Rough, our gas storage site, to be the world’s largest hydrogen store, offering up to 16TWh of storage capacity.”
Centrica reopened the Rough gas storage site in October last year after the facility was closed for over five years.

The UK has ambitions for 10GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, of which at least 50% will be renewable hydrogen.

DUTCH OFFSHORE RENEWABLE HYDROGEN

The 500MW electrolyser will be located above Groningen’s offshore portion of the gas field to the north of the Wadden Islands, and would be operational by 2031.

The hydrogen plant will be installed offshore and powered by offshore wind. The hydrogen will then be transported by pipeline back to the Netherlands to join the Dutch hydrogen transmission system.

Information from the Dutch government showed that the transportation pipeline between the hydrogen plant and the onshore transmission system could be a repurposed gas pipeline.

At 500MW, the hydrogen plant could produce 1.4TWh of hydrogen per year, based on 4,000 load hours and a 70% efficiency. The project would also make up 12.5% of the Dutch government’s proposed 4GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030.

As a stepping stone to this project, a smaller pilot with an electrolysis capacity of approximately 50-100MW is also being worked on.