RWE and Neptune Energy to develop H2opZee project
Learning from the H2opZee demonstration project will help ramp up the hydrogen economy in the Netherlands.
RWE and Neptune Energy announced today (15th February) that they have signed a Joint Development Agreement to develop the offshore green hydrogen demonstration project H2opZee ahead of 2030.
H2opZee is a demonstration project which aims at building 300 to 500 MW electrolyser capacity far out in the Dutch North Sea to produce green hydrogen by using offshore wind. The electrolyser capacity combined with the existing pipeline to be evaluated in a feasibility study
The hydrogen will then be transported to land through an existing pipeline. The pipeline has a capacity of 10 to 12 GW, so it is already suitable for the further roll-out of green hydrogen production to the GW scale in the North Sea.
The plan is to start the feasibility study in Q2 2022. The project is an initiative of TKI Wind op Zee, an initiative supported by the Dutch government that brings people, knowledge and financing together to realise the offshore energy transition.
A feasibility study will be carried out in the first phase, and an accessible knowledge platform will be set up. The objective of this is to start the roll-out of hydrogen at sea in the Netherlands. In the second phase, the project will actually be implemented.
Sven Utermöhlen, CEO Offshore Wind, RWE Renewables, said, “With Neptune Energy at our side, we want to develop the H2opZee project to demonstrate how offshore wind can be an ideal partner for the production of green hydrogen at scale, and to explore the best approaches to system integration.”
Lex de Groot, MD of Neptune Energy in the Netherlands, added, “With the PosHYdon pilot, we are one of the leaders in this field of offshore energy system integration and reuse. The lessons learned from this project apply to H2opZee.”
