Hydrogen is being hailed as, if not a panacea, then at least a key factor in decarbonizing the world’s energy sources. No wonder: hydrogen does not cause any greenhouse gas emissions when burned. However, the transition to a renewable hydrogen economy must first overcome a significant list of challenges.
So-called green hydrogen, produced by electrolysis of water using renewable energy, currently accounts for only about 1% of global production. Plus, it’s about three times the price of its gray counterpart, which is made from fossil fuels.
One of the key pieces of the puzzle in scaling green hydrogen is access to vast amounts of renewable energy and water. Consider the fully offshore wind farm, where high capacity factor floating wind turbines are connected to electrolysers using seawater.
“What is complex and costly when deploying an offshore system? [wind farm] The site actually converts the energy at sea and transports it to land via a cable,” Stéphane Le Berre, offshore project manager at renewable hydrogen producer Lhyfe, tells TNW, adding that this part is unique to the latest major projects billion amounts to euros.
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“One solution for offshore wind farm developers to reduce the need for expensive substations and cables is to replace them with a hydrogen production facility that converts the electricity into hydrogen,” explains Le Berre. The hydrogen can then be transported via a pipeline – it is already abundant in the North Sea thanks to the oil and gas industry.
Striving for green (hydrogen) unicorn status
Founded in 2017 by Matthieu Guesné with six employees, the Nantes-based company now employs 200 people and is represented in 16 countries. It has collected around 80 million euros in funding and its mission is to become a “green unicorn”. Instead of measuring its status by the rating, the company hopes to reach 1 billion tons of avoided CO2 emissions. Lhyfe’s onshore Bouin site, which has been operational since the second half of 2021, is currently producing 300 kg of green hydrogen per day. One kilogram of hydrogen is the energy equivalent of one gallon (3.78 liters) of gasoline, producing just over 9 kg of CO2 if burned.
The fact that Lhyfe became a hydrogen producer in the first place is almost a side effect. In fact, it came about in part by addressing another aspect of global warming – the lack of oxygen in the oceans.
When producing one kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis, eight kilograms of oxygen are also produced as a by-product. Lhyfe intends to pump it back into the sea may contribute to recovery the balance of marine ecosystems being disrupted by climate change.
“When we started Lhyfe, we wanted to produce offshore hydrogen so that it would be economically viable to bring oxygen to the sea,” says Le Berre.
World’s first offshore wind-to-hydrogen pilot project
In September last year, Lhyfe inaugurated the world’s first offshore pilot plant for the production of renewable hydrogen. In June, the company announced that the 1MW demonstrator project called Sealhyfe had produced the first kilograms of green hydrogen. (Chinese state-owned Donfang Electric maybe beaten A few weeks delay from actual production.)
Sealhyfe is about 20km off the coast of Le Croisic, France. Today it produces half a ton of hydrogen per day. It is connected to the SEM-REV Powerhub – Europe’s first floating wind farm and site for multi-technology offshore testing.
SEM-REV features an underwater hub that looks like a giant block with four outlets. One of these serves to connect the SEM-REV wind turbine, another serves as a cable that connects the site to the grid on land. This provides two much-coveted sockets for demonstration projects, one of which now enables the Sealhyfe platform to draw power directly from the wind turbine.
The Sealhyfe electrolyser sits on a floating platform designed to stabilize the production unit at sea and uses desalinated water for electrolysis. Nine liters of water are required for one kilogram of green hydrogen, and with drinking water scarcity expected to increase significantly in the coming decades, this is one of the main arguments for locating production sites near or on the sea.
Lhyfe has until May next year before it has to part ways with the SEM-REV hub. Until then, they not only want to prove that the technology works, but also withstand the harsh conditions of the Atlantic Ocean in winter.
Hydrogen HOPE
Lessons learned from Sealhyfe will feed into future offshore projects. This also includes the unprecedentedly large 10 MW project HOPE, which Lhyfe is coordinating with eight other partners. The European Clean HydrogenPartnership program has selected the project for a €20 million grant.
HOPE will produce up to four tons of green hydrogen per day. It is planned to be commissioned outside the Belgian coast in 2026. By 2030, Lhyfe aims to have multiplied several 10MW projects to reach a total capacity of 100MW.
Across Europe, several other offshore wind power hydrogen production projects are beginning to take shape. One of these is H2Mare, run by a group of industrial and academic partners led by Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa, the energy giant’s wind turbine division.
“Offshore locations could allow densely populated regions like Europe and Japan to produce at least some of their hydrogen near demand centers on the coast, thereby reducing transportation costs.” says H2Mares project coordinator and offshore hydrogen program manager at Siemens Energy, Mathias Müller. “Also, wind speeds at sea are generally higher and more consistent, allowing for consistently higher performance.”
Siemens has invested EUR 120 million in the project, which will not involve the construction of a fully-fledged offshore system, but rather a test platform on a barge on the open sea and an onshore test setup for the electrolysis system. Efforts are being made to demonstrate financial feasibility and the best configuration for converting offshore wind energy to hydrogen.
It is wise not to fall behind on batteries and Europe is not sleeping on hydrogen
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has selected H2Mare as one of three flagship hydrogen projects that will receive a total of 700 million euros. As part of Germany’s plans to generate 30 MW of offshore wind energy in 2030, the government has reserved an area in the North Sea for the production of green hydrogen with a capacity of up to 1 GW.
However, the industry is not satisfied with the ambitions. A group that included BP, Siemens Gamesa, RWE and Lhyfe signed in May a call to the federal government with the request to include the goal of an additional offshore hydrogen production of 10 GW by 2035 in the national strategy and the area development plan.
The Dutch government is also pushing the offshore hydrogen agenda. In March this year, it designated an area in the north of the country, near the Wadden Islands, for a 500 MW wind-to-hydrogen project. A smaller pilot project with an electrolysis capacity of between 50 MW and 100 MW is being developed as a stepping stone.
“I think Europe was smart enough to bet on hydrogen and support hydrogen early enough. Because they learned from what happened with the batteries in China, and of course everything that Europe tried with batteries was years behind schedule compared to China,” says Le Berre. “Now Europe has done everything to ensure that we are on time and can actually compete with China efficiently, economically and technologically.”
With RePowerEU, the European Commission has set a target of producing 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and projects that hydrogen – domestic and imported – could account for 14% of its energy mix by 2050.
To support this goal, it wants to mobilize 372 billion euros through the InvestEU program by 2027. For European start-ups building electrolysers or creating demand through development hydrogen powered aircraft and cars, that kind of industry support could see them through – and lead us to a cleaner future.