ENERGY DEVELOPMENT: Norway wants to supply Germany with hydrogen. Hydrogen is considered the basic material for a carbon dioxide-free economy. Now Germany and Norway want to cooperate on this technology of the future. But until that happens, natural gas is still the first step.
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Translation:
Norway wants to supply hydrogen to Germany in the future, initially to supplement and later replace Germany’s natural gas supply. To this end, Germany’s largest energy supplier signed an agreement with the Federal Republic as well as energy suppliers RWE and Equinor on Thursday, as announced during the Oslo trip of German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens).
CEOs Markus Krebber (RWE) and Anders Opedal, who accompanied Habeck, signed a strategic energy partnership that envisages the development of a corresponding infrastructure by 2030. A hydrogen pipeline to Germany and corresponding facilities for onward transport in the target country are to be built.
“The cooperation has the potential to make Norway an important supplier of hydrogen for Germany and Europe,” said Equinor CEO Opedal. “This is a unique opportunity to build a hydrogen industry in Norway where hydrogen can also be used as a feedstock for domestic industry.”
Krebber added that in order to shift from fossil fuels to climate-friendly fuels, the development of the hydrogen economy is urgently needed. First, he said, is extraction from natural gas, with carbon dioxide captured and stored (“blue hydrogen”), followed by “green hydrogen” produced with renewable energy via electrolysis.
“Blue hydrogen in large quantities can make a start and then become greener and greener,” the RWE CEO said. The idea is to supply significant quantities to industry, he said, but electricity generation also benefits: “Our planned investments in hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants will strengthen security of supply in a decarbonized electricity sector.”
Electricity from hydrogen
Norway’s Equinor, formerly Statoil, plans to build 2 gigawatts of blue hydrogen capacity by 2030, with 10 gigawatts planned by 2038. The “blue” gas would be fed into a new pipeline serving several countries, which Equinor is currently looking into building with Gassco and others. RWE would purchase it and use it to produce electricity in hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants.
Equinor and RWE also want to cooperate on the production of green hydrogen, i.e. hydrogen that is free of carbon dioxide. To that end, they are looking into the possibility of producing hydrogen using offshore wind turbines at sea in Norway, Germany and other countries that lie along the new pipeline.
“Offshore wind power is by far the most effective form of renewable power generation,” the companies said in a joint press release. “In combination with electrolysers, offshore wind power will play an important role in the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy.”
Both companies are already working on the so-called Aqua-Sector, a project in the North Sea that aims to build a 300-megawatt offshore wind farm. The wind farm there will be connected to electrolysers to produce green hydrogen directly at sea.
Compensation for fluctuating renewables
Together, RWE and Equinor also plan to invest in flexible, hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants in Germany. The plants, with a capacity of around 3 gigawatts, are to be in place by 2030. The hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants are intended to compensate for fluctuating feed-in from renewables and help balance electricity demand. Until now, coal, gas and nuclear power plants have performed this function.
Habeck’s ministry envisages that the new plants will be able to run on 50 percent hydrogen at the time of commissioning. Both companies are aiming for 100 percent hydrogen by the mid-thirties.
Blue hydrogen has long been controversial, especially in the camp of the Greens and environmentalists, but the German government is now going the way of capture and compression technology (CCS) after all, since green hydrogen is still too expensive and too rare, and there is not enough green electricity available for it. Habeck’s trip to Norway should open doors here as well, since Norway already has a lot of experience with CCS.
The new power plants will initially still require conventional natural gas. Equinor will reportedly supply this to meet the joint power plants’ own needs. To enable the full conversion to hydrogen, the natural gas will then be replaced by blue hydrogen. Once the offshore hydrogen production facilities are connected to the planned pipeline, green hydrogen will then gradually supplement and eventually replace its blue counterpart in imports to Germany. In addition, RWE and Equinor are looking into joint investments in pure offshore wind projects in Norway and Germany, it said. The same applies to the production of green hydrogen onshore in Norway, it added.
Nice to see that large scale energy storage related projects are getting built!