Ørsted to develop huge renewable hydrogen plant

6 April 2021

'SeaH2Land' is an ambitious vision, linking GW-scale electrolysis to the large industrial demand in the Dutch-Flemish North Sea Port cluster through an envisaged regional cross-border pipeline. The green electricity required to produce the renewable hydrogen is expected to come from the build-out of additional large-scale offshore wind. The major industrial companies in the region, ArcelorMittal, Yara, Dow Benelux, and Zeeland Refinery, support the development of the required regional infrastructure to enable sustainably-produced steel, ammonia, ethylene, and fuels in the future, helping the Netherlands and Belgium to accelerate their carbon reductions towards 2030 and beyond.

The SeaH2Land vision includes a renewable hydrogen production facility of 1 GW by 2030 to be developed by Ørsted. If realised, the electrolyser can convert about 20 % of the current hydrogen consumption in the region to renewable hydrogen.

With 580 000 tonnes per year, the North Sea Port cluster is one of the largest production and demand centres of fossil hydrogen in Europe today. Driven by decarbonisation efforts, industrial demand in the cluster could grow to about 1 million tonnes by 2050, equivalent to roughly 10 GW of electrolysis.

Ørsted proposes to connect the GW electrolyser directly to a new 2 GW offshore wind farm in the Dutch North Sea. This fits well with the ambitions of the Dutch authorities for an accelerated offshore wind roll-out in line with increasing electricity demand. The offshore wind farm could be built in one of the zones in the southern part of the Dutch exclusive economic zone that has already been designated for offshore wind development.

The GW electrolyser is proposed to link to the envisaged regional pipeline system connecting large-scale consumption and production in the cluster. Yara, in consortium with Ørsted, and Zeeland Refinery have each announced plans for mid-size renewable hydrogen production at their sites, while Dow has been exporting hydrogen to Yara since 2018 through the world's first conversion of a gas pipeline into hydrogen. The network can be extended further south to ArcelorMittal as a short-term no-regret project and further north, beneath the river Scheldt, to Zeeland Refinery, as a crucial link to create a unique regional ecosystem of hydrogen exchange with significant carbon reduction in the manufacturing processes of ammonia, chemicals, and steel and a significant contribution to the European Green Deal.

Moreover, the cluster strategy proposes to extend the 380 kV high-voltage network for the electrification needs of the industry south of the river Scheldt. This would enable GW-sized electrolysis and offshore wind landing zones on both sides of the river, turning the cluster into a true energy hub.

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