New wave of offshore energy innovations energise the nation’s net zero ambitions
IT is frequently argued that offshore wind, like other renewables, suffers from being intermittent and from generating power at times when not much power is needed, such as at night. The bigger the UK and Scotland's offshore generating capabilities become, the sharper these issues will become, unless the industry finds some great solutions.
Benj Sykes, Head of Market Development in the UK for Ørsted, argues that the solution to the problem lies in the emerging hydrogen economy.
By using offshore wind to power the electrolysis required to split off hydrogen from water, the industry will be able to generate as much stored energy as is required by society, he points out, with visions such as Ørsted's Seah2land project – a huge renewable hydrogen production facility projected to be built by 2030.
Ørsted already has a number of hydrogenrelated projects running. It is part of the Gigastack consortium, along with ITM Power, Phillips 66 Ltd., and Element Energy. The Gigastack project aims to show how renewable hydrogen derived from offshore wind can support the UK'S 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target.
Producing hydrogen from water, using offshore wind to drive the electrolysis process, enables the process to be completely de-carbonised.
Sykes notes that this means that energyintensive industries and the transportation sector will have the opportunity to reduce the carbon intensity of their fuels by using renewable hydrogen.
For the first part of the project ITM Power developed designs for a low-cost modular fivemegawatt electrolyser.
The second phase begins a Front-end Engineering Design (FEED) study on a 100MW electrolyser, which will specify the detailed workings of a system connected to a wind farm and industrial users.
The offshore wind power will come from Ørsted's Hornsea Two offshore wind farm.
Anders Christian Nordstrøm, Vice President for Hydrogen, Ørsted, comments, “Creating renewable hydrogen with offshore wind really has the potential to decarbonise industrial processes, and what is needed now is to scale up the electrolyser technology and bring the cost down. At the right cost, this technology has the potential to play a huge role in meeting the UK'S decarbonisation targets.
“We're excited to be part of this project in the Humber region where we are already very active, including constructing the biggest offshore wind farms in the world, Hornsea One and Two, and with them setting the global standard for deployment of offshore wind at scale.”
In another project, Ørsted and BP have agreed to the joint development of a largescale renewable hydrogen project at BP'S Lingen Refinery in North West Germany.
The project, which is expected to be operational in 2024, will comprise a 50 Megawatt (MW) electrolyser system capable of generating one ton of renewable hydrogen per hour or almost 9,000 tonnes a year.
This would be sufficient to replace approximately 20 percent of the refinery's current fossil-based hydrogen consumption, avoiding around 80,000 tonnes CO2 equivalent emissions a year – equivalent to emissions from around 45,000 cars in Germany.
The project is also intended to support a longer-term ambition to build more than 500MW of renewable hydrogen capacity at Lingen.
This could provide renewable hydrogen to both meet all the refinery's hydrogen demand and provide feedstock for future synthetic fuel production. The electrolyser is expected to be powered by an Ørsted North Sea offshore wind farm.
Martin Neubert, Executive Vice President for Ørsted comments: “Heavy industries such as refineries use large quantities of hydrogen in their manufacturing processes.
"They will continue to need hydrogen, but replacing the currently fossil-based hydrogen with hydrogen produced from renewable energy can help lower their CO2 footprint.
"But first, renewable hydrogen has to become cost competitive, and for that we need projects such as BP'S Lingen refinery which will demonstrate the electrolyser technology at large scale and showcase reallife application of hydrogen based on offshore wind.”
The partners have jointly applied for funding for the project named Lingen Green Hydrogen from the EU Innovation Fund, which is currently one of the largest programmes for low-carbon technologies focusing particularly among others on energy intensive industries.