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The Netherlands has asked its grid operator to build a
ring-shaped hydrogen pipeline to supply industrial clusters in two
countries at first, and later trucks, ships, and buildings.
State-owned infrastructure operator Gasunie, which runs natural
gas networks and storage in the Netherlands and Germany, is set to
develop a Dutch national hydrogen network, after a request by the
State Secretary for Energy and Climate. Because green hydrogen is
not yet a profitable sector, the pipeline would have seen only
gradual investment without the move.
Gasunie already operates the 12-km Yara-Dow hydrogen pipeline,
commissioned in 2018. The pipeline in the Netherlands runs between
Dow Chemical Benelux's facility in Terneuzen and Norwegian ammonia
producer Yara's facility in Sluiskil. The collaboration is part of
the Dutch government and Gasunie's Green Deal on Hydrogen, a green
industrial growth partnership agreed in 2016.
Gasunie says the planned national hydrogen infrastructure will
be the first large-scale retrofit of natural gas pipelines, making
use of existing pipelines for 85% of the backbone to save
substantially on costs. The project, with an estimated price tag of
€1.5 billion ($1.77 billion), is scheduled for completion in
2027.
The move follows publication of a report, the HyWay27
report by PwC, commissioned by the Dutch government, the
Rotterdam Port Authority, and network operators Gasunie and
TenneT.
The report examined whether the gas grid could be cheaply
repurposed for hydrogen and identified sources of hydrogen supply
and demand.
To be reused, the 1,200 km-long, 36 inch-diameter pipelines
would need to be cleaned and prepared, according to the report.
Gasunie would also need to buy the existing gas networks from its
own network operator, GTS.
The pipeline would make hydrogen cheaper to transport and could
also boost the development of the hydrogen market by connecting
more producers and consumers, allowing a broadening of potential
markets and a greater number of producers.
"These dynamics will contribute to the development of a liquid
(commodity) market for hydrogen," wrote the authors of the report.
The report found both green and blue hydrogen could make a
contribution by reducing CO2 emissions.
From the perspective of the Dutch government, the project
follows up on to initial efforts to position the country at the
forefront of hydrogen transportation in Europe by 2030. In 2019,
the government laid out a National Climate Agreement, a policy targeting 3-4 GW of
electrolysis capacity by 2030, and the following year it published
a strategy on hydrogen.
The Dutch government is seizing the chance for the Netherlands
to become a "hydrogen hub" in Europe.
The Netherlands has a head start in the hydrogen race, with
proximity to Europe's largest container seaport in Rotterdam, an
international natural gas pipeline network, North Sea offshore wind
farms, national salt caverns and depleted natural gas fields that
might be used for hydrogen storage, found the report.
The proposed connections would be part of a future European
Hydrogen Backbone, an interconnected hydrogen network stretching
across Europe unveiled in a 2021 paper by Gas for Climate, a
group of 10 companies including Gasunie that represent 75% of
Europe's gas demand.
The heart of the hydrogen pipeline is the Dutch Rotterdam and
Groningen industrial areas, where many of the planned or active EU
hydrogen production projects are located, but it will also serve
other industrial clusters in the Netherlands like Chemelot in
Limburg.
German energy company Uniper and the Port of Rotterdam Authority
are planning a hydrogen production plant in Rotterdam by 2025 with
an initial capacity of 100 MW.
In Groningen, a consortium of Gasunie, Groningen Seaports, and
Shell Nederland, banded together as the NortH2 project, will
complete a feasibility study this year with the aim of generating
green hydrogen from offshore wind farms, Gasunie said.
Leaving the Netherlands, the planned Dutch hydrogen network will
also reach German industrial areas via Gasunie's parallel HyPerLink
project: a German hydrogen pipeline that would connect Dutch supply
to German industrial demand and storage sites such as the Clean
Hydrogen Coastline project run by German municipal gas and electric
services provider EWE. Through the project, EWE aims to install 400
MW of electrolysis capacity with corresponding storage.
While the pipeline would supply hydrogen to northwest German
industrial customers, another pipeline could import captured CO2
from there to projects like the Port of Rotterdam and Gasunie's
Porthos Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) project.
The pipeline will be engineered for hydrogen compression.
"International research and testing show that the design parameters
for high-pressure natural gas pipelines are in line with the new
hydrogen pipelines that will be constructed," a Gasunie
spokesperson told Net-Zero Business Daily.
Gasunie has decided to modify the pipeline so it can deliver
100% hydrogen rather than a blend. "Although it is technologically
possible to blend natural gas and hydrogen, Gasunie [is focusing]
on the development of a pure hydrogen backbone for several reasons.
Not only does the Netherlands have the opportunity to make a
separate hydrogen backbone quite easily [by] using existing natural
gas pipelines, but also it is not very efficient to blend pure
hydrogen with natural gas and separate it at the end to enable the
use of hydrogen as a resource, e.g. for the petrochemical
industry," the Gasunie spokesperson said.
Gasunie in 2018 said it would increasingly transport different
energy carriers, such as hydrogen and green gases, through its
pipelines.
Extending its hydrogen pipeline ambitions in Germany, Gasunie is
separately pairing up with Shell and Germany power company RWE on
the AquaDuctus project: a proposed 10-km green hydrogen
pipeline, integrated with offshore wind power, distribution,
control, and storage platforms.
