JCB heir Jo Bamford – are concentrating on different markets.
Owner of green hydrogen production company Ryse and
UK bus manufacturer Wrightbus, Bamford recently outlined
an ambitious plan to use buses to catalsye the UK’s hydrogen
economy.
Wrightbus has already supplied a number of hydrogen fuel
cell powered buses around the UK and is poised to deliver a
fleet of 20 vehicles to Transport for London. But Bamford has
ambitions to scale this up rapidly, and earlier this summer
unveiled a “fully-costed” vision on how the private sector and
government can work together to to bring 3,000 hydrogen buses
to the streets of the UK by 2024.
Under his plans, these new buses along with five new zeroemission
hydrogen production plants dotted around the UK
coast will be used to kick start the UK’s hydrogen economy
and create thousands of new jobs. Ryse has already applied for
planning permission to build the first of these at a site near
Herne Bay in Kent, where it will be powered by electricity
from Vattenfall’s Kentish flats offshore wind farm and use
electrolysis technology supplied by Norwegian firm Nel
Hydrogen.
Calling on the government to set aside 10 per cent of its
National Bus Strategy fund for hydrogen Bamford said: “You
have to start somewhere, there are so many different variables
around getting hydrogen going, but in essence you need volume
and a captive customer – and if you’ve got 200 buses coming
back to a bus depot every night to be filled up you can get it
going.”
Whilst Bamford plans to usher in the hydrogen economy
via heavy transport, other projects currently in the pipeline are
focused on producing green hydrogen for the gas grid.
One such initiative is the recently launched NortH2 project,
a project involving Shell, Groningen Seaports and Dutch gas
network operator Gasunie that will see a new “mega offshore
wind farm” in the North sea feed a giant hydrogen production
facility in the Netherlands seaport of Eemshaven. Green
hydrogen produced at the site will be transported along existing
gas infrastructure to customers throughout Northwest Europe.
The project’s ambition is to generate around 3 to 4GW of
offshore wind energy by 2030, and as much as 10GW by 2040.
Depending on the outcome of an ongoing feasibility study, the
consortium hopes to produce first hydrogen by 2027.
Whilst NortH2 will be carrying electrolysis on shore, other
efforts are taking a slightly different approach by exploring how
existing offshore infrastructure could be adapted and used to
carry out production.
Led by Dutch exploration and production company Neptune
Energy the PosHYydon project plans to demonstrate how
hydrogen could be produced on existing oil and gas platforms
using electricity generated by offshore wind.
The project will see the installation of a green hydrogen
production facility on Neptune Energy’s Q13a platform, an
electrified oil and gas platform in the North Sea just off the
coast of Scheveningen in the Netherlands.
Seawater will be pumped into containerised units on the
platform, where it will be desalinated and then fed into an
electrolyser.
The facility will receive green electricity by cable from the
energy
Meanwhile, the UK led ERM Dolphyn
project is going one step further, and
looking at producing green hydrogen
from electrolyser units directly coupled
to floating wind turbines situated far out
at sea.
Led by environmental consultant
ERM, the project has received £3.12m
from the government’s hydrogen
Supply programme and, following
the completion of an initial proof of
concept, is now entering its next phase.
Project director, ERM partner
Kevin Kinsella explained that the
July 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 16
team is currently focused on getting
an initial 2MW unit up and running in
a consented area around 20km off the
coast of Aberdeen, followed by a 10MW
unit pre commercial unit at the same
location. The ultimate aim is deploy a
4GW array of floating wind turbines in
the North Sea by the early 2030s.
Whilst hydrogen generated by the
initial units will be exported to the shore
via a three-inch diameter flexible pipe,
Kinsella said that the larger commercial
scale field will most likely connect
into an existing repurposed offshore
shore but will simulate generation from
the nearby Luchterduinen offshore
windfarm. It’s expected to produce
approximately 3000 – 4000 Nm3 / day of
H2 for the Gasunie grid.
Neptune Energy’s Patrice Hijsterborg
told The Engineer that the aim of the
two year project is to demonstrate
how hydrogen production could
represent a sustainable future for oil
and gas platforms that are nearing the
end of their lives. “Neptune wants to
demonstrate that H2 can be handled
and treated on a live, producing oil & gas
platform,” he said. “The long term view is
that Neptune gas infrastructure can be
utilised for offshore renewable energy,
and therefore share cost with producing
our relatively low carbon North Sea gas.”
with net zero by 2050 written into uk law this is a
fantastic opportunity for the oil and gas industry to
transition smoothly from fossil fuels
/www.theengineer.co.uk