On Tuesday, British energy multinational bp and Danish wind major Ørsted signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to work together on industrial-scale production of green hydrogen, marking a major development step in bp’s hydrogen business.
Green hydrogen is made by the electrolysis of water using renewable power, producing zero emissions.
Under their proposed Lingen Green Hydrogen project, bp and Ørsted will build an initial 50 megawatt (MW) electrolyser and associated infrastructure at bp’s Lingen Refinery in north-west Germany. The Lingen Refinery currently processes about five million tons of crude oil per year (100,000 barrels a day), producing fuels, heating oil and chemical feedstocks. In 2018, the world’s first trial of green hydrogen in a fuels refinery was conducted at bp Lingen.
The plant will be powered by renewable energy generated by an Ørsted offshore wind farm in the North Sea, and the hydrogen produced will be used in the refinery.
A final investment decision (FID) is anticipated by early 2022, subject to appropriate enabling policies being in place. The project could be operational by 2024.
Hydrogen outlook
Research released this week from Frost & Sullivan predicts the global production outlook for hydrogen could more than double over the next decade, reaching 168 million tons by 2030 from 71 million tons in 2020, with revenue expected to rise from $177 billion in 2020 to $420 billion by 2030.
Hydrogen is currently used primarily in the industrial sector, but is expected to play an increasingly key role in decarbonizing the power, industry and transportation sectors, especially those that are hard-to-electrify or expensive-to-electrify, such as maritime and aviation.
Their research pointed to Germany as one of a few global leaders in the development of hydrogen and fuel cell (FC) technologies, with most existing hydrogen technologies, public and private R&D, pilot and demonstration projects currently oriented towards strengthening the country’s automotive industry.
Other major economies, however, are quickly catching up. France’s recently passed “Hydrogen Plan” aims to put the country at 10 percent zero-carbon hydrogen adoption for industrial applications by 2023 and 40 percent by 2028. Japan, meanwhile, is heavily investing through public funds in R&D for production, storage and development of hydrogen infrastructure for import and use across multiple areas.
How it works
Electrolysis splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. When powered by renewable energy, this produces ‘green’ hydrogen, without generating direct carbon emissions. Hydrogen is widely used in refinery processes where – as in Lingen – it is now typically produced by reforming natural gas, which does result in CO2 emissions. This is also known as “grey” hydrogen.
The 50 MW electrolyser project is expected to produce one ton of green hydrogen every hour, or almost 9,000 tons a year. This would be enough to replace around 20 percent of the refinery’s current grey hydrogen consumption, avoiding around 80,000 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions a year, roughly equal to the emissions coughed up by 45,000 German cars.
Making it cost-competitive
“Hydrogen will have an increasing role to play in meeting the energy demands of a decarbonizing world. And we are determined to build a leading position in this emerging industry,” said Dev Sanyal, bp’s executive vice president for gas and low carbon. “Bringing together Ørsted and bp, Lingen Green Hydrogen offers the opportunity both to accelerate significant emissions reduction in our refinery and build experience of large-scale green hydrogen production and deployment. This has the potential to play an important role in the development of a hydrogen economy, in Germany and beyond.”
“Heavy industries such as refineries use large quantities of hydrogen in their manufacturing processes. They will continue to need hydrogen, but replacing the current fossil-based hydrogen with hydrogen produced from renewable energy can help these industries dramatically lower their CO2 footprint,” added Martin Neubert, executive vice president and CEO of offshore wind for Ørsted.
“But first, renewable hydrogen has to become cost competitive with fossil-based hydrogen, and for that we need projects such as this with bp’s Lingen refinery which will demonstrate the electrolyser technology at large scale and showcase real-life application of hydrogen based on offshore wind.”
bp and Ørsted have jointly applied for funding for the Lingen Green Hydrogen project from the EU Innovation Fund: one of the largest funding programs for innovative low carbon technologies, with a particular focus on energy-intensive industries.
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