World-first green hydrogen produced on live North Sea gas platform

The PosHYdon pilot project has produced its first green hydrogen aboard an operational offshore platform in the Dutch North Sea, a milestone its backers describe as a world first in combining offshore wind power, hydrogen production and natural gas operations on a single working installation.

The trial is taking place on Eni Energy Netherlands’ Q13a-A platform, roughly 13 kilometres off the coast of Scheveningen, which is already the first fully electrified production platform in the Dutch sector of the North Sea. On board, seawater is converted into demineralised water and then split into hydrogen through electrolysis, powered by a 1 MW electrolyser supplied by Nel Hydrogen and run on electricity from offshore wind.

The pilot’s immediate focus is achieving stable hydrogen output before testing how the electrolyser copes with the natural variability of wind-generated power, work regarded as essential groundwork for any future large-scale offshore hydrogen production.

Rene Peters, business director for energy infrastructure at Dutch research organisation TNO, which developed the concept, said the trial would provide practical knowledge needed to scale up offshore hydrogen while helping to reduce risk and control costs. Lex de Groot, managing director of Eni Energy Netherlands, said reusing existing offshore platforms for sustainable applications was now becoming a tangible reality and called the achievement a meaningful step towards a future offshore energy system in the North Sea.

PosHYdon is backed by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and delivered by a consortium of 15 partners, including Gasunie, Eneco, TAQA and EBN, with fuller results expected to be shared in the autumn.