Three green hydrogen projects have been selected by the European Commission to receive funding from its Horizon 2020 innovation funding scheme.

Green H2 Atlantic, Greenhyscale and the Refhyne clean refinery development have each received €30mn ($34mn) grants to help develop their propositions. 

Green H2 Atlantic will develop a 100MW green hydrogen production facility adjacent to a coal-fired power plant in Sines, Portugal. The project will consist of modular electrolysers connected together that are able to ramp up and down quickly to deal with intermittent renewable generation.

Construction should start in 2023, with startup expected in 2025, subject to securing the necessary authorisations.

The project is developed by a consortium composed of 13 entities, including utilities EDP, Galp and Engie.

Refinery decarbonisation

Refhyne will install a 100MW proton-exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser at Shell’s refinery in Cologne, Germany. The resulting hydrogen and oxygen will be fed into the existing refinery networks to decarbonise refinery operations. These operations currently use hydrogen produced on site using steam methane reforming. 

100MW – Electrolyser size targeted by all three projects

The project will be delivered by the same team responsible for a 10MW PEM electrolyser already installed at the same site. UK manufacturer ITM Power is responsible for delivering the electrolyser.

Power will be sourced through new power-purchase agreements with named renewable providers.

As well as Shell and ITM Power, the project has six other participants, including industrial gases firm Linde and research organisation Sintef.

Scaling up

Greenhyscale will develop a 100MW alkaline electrolyser in Denmark’s Greenlab industrial park. Of this capacity, 80MW will be directly connected to renewable power generation while the other 20MW will source certified green electricity from a grid connection.

The project will act as a grid-balancing service provider as well as meeting demand for local transport and industrial applications. It aims to produce green hydrogen at below €2.85/kg.

The project also aims to develop a 7.5MW electrolysis module suitable for positioning adjacent to offshore windfarms.

The project has ten participants, including Norwegian energy company Equinor and technology firm Siemens Gamesa.

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Author: Tom Young