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Two Nordic offshore wind developers have staked out a path that
could cut the cost of transporting power to consumers.
Danish developer Ørsted on 7 September announced it had received $6
million (€5 million) in EU funding to demonstrate electrolyzers for
cheaply producing green hydrogen from offshore wind turbines in the
UK.
The news followed a 2020 call for proposals from the EU's Fuel
Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), which funds 19 hydrogen demonstration projects
across Europe. The FCH JU called the electrolyzer research "the
first step to commercial offshore hydrogen production."
Separately, state-owned Norwegian company Equinor on 3 September
announced it won $10 million
(NOK82.70) in state funding to experiment with subsea electric
grids and cables for offshore wind in Norway.
Linking up with hydrogen in the UK
Ørsted will build offshore wind-integrated electrolyzer
technology in a consortium with British electrolyzer manufacturer
ITM Power, wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa, and
consultancy Element Energy.
The megawatt-scale electrolyzer will be built shoreside in the
English east coast town of Grimsby, but the consortium is mulling
the use of a system that would be located offshore with pipelines
that would bring green hydrogen to the shore.
Grimsby is where Ørsted has an operations and maintenance hub
and is 89 km northeast of the 1.2-GW Hornsea One wind farm, for
which the first phase was completed in January.
The use of hydrogen as a cost reducer for bringing renewable
energy to demand centers without electric grid infrastructure has
the potential to speed decarbonization, the company said in the
statement.
The venture aims to create compact electrolysis systems that can
tolerate harsh offshore environments, but even so, are low
maintenance and low cost.
One of the aims of the study is to make renewable hydrogen
competitive with natural gas, according to the FCH JU call
for proposals.
Paired with a carbon tax, cheaper hydrogen from offshore wind
might enable "bulk markets for green hydrogen" in the heating,
industry, and transportation sectors, it said. This in turn could
ease the use of renewable energy in those sectors.
On the day the electrolyzer study was announced, Ørsted said it
had picked contractors ahead of
competing in a tender for a separate, but similarly-focused project
in Denmark.
Ørsted is bidding to develop one of two state-controlled
artificial islands in the North and Baltic seas, which will be used
for storage and distribution of power "on an unprecedented scale"
from Danish offshore wind facilities, part of broader plans to
shift from individual offshore wind farms to energy islands in
Denmark by 2030.
The islands would enable Denmark, for example, to export cheap
Danish offshore wind power to countries around the North Sea.
Such islands would also enable a further expansion of offshore
wind while requiring fewer land-based power pylons, the Danish
government said in its plan to meet its
Paris Agreement obligations last year.
The pair of islands are set to be funded under a 2023 Danish
state tender and site options for the islands are now under
investigation, the government said in a July consultation
paper.
The facilities may incorporate energy storage, electrolysis
plants, and Power-to-X technologies, according to a paper by law
firm DLA Piper.
The long-term aim is to store electricity that can be converted
into green fuel like hydrogen for transportation via subsea
pipelines to Denmark and other countries, the law firm said.
As a member state, Denmark can contribute to the EU target to
install 40 GW of electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen by 2030,
laid out in the EU's 2020 Hydrogen Strategy.
The European Commission is targeting installation of 300 GW of
offshore wind capacity by 2050, 25 times more than what the EU has
today, in its offshore renewables strategy.
The goal means a parallel upscaling in distribution technologies
is needed to move the power produced offshore to demand
centers.
Innovative cables in Norway
Meanwhile, Equinor aims to study cheaper ways to connect
offshore fixed and floating wind power to the grid in Norway.
The research, led by the Norwegian independent research
organization SINTEF and supported by the state, is set to take
place over three years.
One of the aims is to build a Norwegian industry supplying new
cable designs, subsea technology, and floating converter stations,
enabling the creation of green jobs and increased export revenues,
Equinor said in the statement.
