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EurOil COMMENTARY EurOil

hydrogen, and the scaling up of carbon capture The NovaLT unit will be installed at Snam’s
and storage (CCS) technology. Istrana compressor station in northern Italy. It
The UK’s first hydrogen and CCS project is will not only compress and transport hydrogen,
situated at the St Fergus gas terminal in Scotland. but also use the fuel to power itself. It can run on
It will generate hydrogen from North Sea gas a methane-hydrogen mix as low as 5% hydrogen
arriving onshore and capture carbon from the to up to 100%.
process for storage in depleted reservoirs, start- Snam estimates it could feed up to 7bn cubic
ing in 2024. Its developer, Pale Blue Dot Energy, metres per year of hydrogen into its grid, which
awarded a contract for consultancy and design is enough to meet the gas demand of 3mn fam-
work for its first phase back in March. The gov- ilies and would reduce CO2 emissions by 5mn
ernment has also set aside GBP800mn ($1bn) tpy. This would mean a 90-10 blend of methane
for a CCS infrastructure fund in its new budget. and hydrogen in its network.
Back in the EU, gas grid operators have taken Italy is seen as a good candidate for the wide-
notice of the EC’s strategy and have devised spread deployment of hydrogen, given its exten-
a plan for converting their systems to handle sive gas pipeline network. Its many gas import
hydrogen at an affordable price. options could also be harnessed to produce blue
The plan, known as European Hydrogen hydrogen, abated using CCS.
Backbone, was presented by Spain’s Enagas, The Netherlands also wants to take a leading
Denmark’s Energinet, Belgium’s Fluxys, the role in hydrogen development, taking advantage
Netherlands’ Gasunie, France’s GRTgaz and of the pipelines that carry North Sea gas to its
Terega, the Czech Republic’s Net4Gas, Germa- shore. Its gas production is in decline, and there-
ny’s Open Grid Europe and Ontras, Italy’s Snam fore hydrogen production is seen as a way of
and Sweden’s Swedegas. Consultancy firm Gui- extracting extra value from this infrastructure.
dehouse is also taking part in the initiative. The country is also a major wind energy pro-
The group projects that a hydrogen network ducer, with almost 4.5 GW of turbine capacity.
could begin to emerge in the mid-2020s and These farms can be used to produce green hydro-
grow to a size of 6,800 km by 2030, expanding gen from water, effectively storing excess wind
to 23,000 km a decade later. Some 75% of this energy in a solid form. A group of businesses and
network would be made up of converted gas research institutions are developing such a pro-
pipelines. ject at Neptune Energy’s Q13a platform in the
The initiative would cost somewhere in the Dutch North Sea.
region of €27-64bn ($31-73bn), according to the Onshore, Norwegian engineering consul-
study. But the operators estimate that hydrogen tancy DNL GL reported on July 21 that it had
could be delivered across Europe efficiently, at teamed with up Dutch glass maker Celsian to
a levelised transport cost of only €0.09-0.17 per create a Dutch consortium to develop a burner
kg per 1,000 km. The range is wide because of technology enabling energy-intensive industries
uncertainties about compressor costs. to move from gas to hydrogen.
The group wants to see other grid operators The burner technology will undergo tests
sign on to the initiative, which has the eventual in Veendam, where magnesium salt is pro-
goal of an EU-wide hydrogen grid. cessed using high-temperature processes.
One member, Snam, meanwhile announced By year-end, the goal is to run an oil stove at
on July 20 that it had finished testing the world’s the plant on hydrogen supplied from Gasu-
first hybrid hydrogen-blend turbine for gas net- nie’s nearby Hystock production facility in
works, designed by Baker Hughes. Zuidwending.™

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