German utility firm Uniper Energy, Düsseldorf, plans to establish a German national hub for hydrogen in Wilhelmshaven, which will include an import terminal for green ammonia, and is working on a corresponding feasibility study. The company said it has now dropped a plan for a floating LNG terminal in the port.
Commissioning of the new terminal is planned for the second half of this decade, depending on national import demand and export opportunities, Uniper said on April 14, announcing the project.
Under the plans, the terminal will be equipped with an ammonia cracker for producing green hydrogen, and it will also be connected to the planned hydrogen network.
A 410 MW electrolysis plant is also proposed, which – in combination with the import terminal – would be capable of supplying around 295,000 mt, or 10 percent of the demand expected for the whole of Germany in 2030.
Uniper said the generated hydrogen will primarily be used to supply local industry, but it will also be possible to feed it into the national hydrogen network.
“It is essential that Germany and Europe remain industrial powerhouses: if we want to achieve this and still hit our ambitious climate protection targets, we need hydrogen to power sectors such as steel production, the chemicals industry or in freight, shipping and air transport,” said Uniper Chief Operating Officer David Bryson.
“We need to get hydrogen out of the laboratory and start using it in large-scale applications and marketable industrial solutions. One way of achieving this is to import green ammonia and convert it into hydrogen, which is something we are looking at for Wilhelmshaven,” he said.
Currently, Germany plans to generate 14 TWh of green hydrogen in 2030, but the demand for that year is forecast to be 90-100 TWh, according to Uniper.
“The discrepancy between these two figures is abundantly clear. We will be heavily dependent on imports if we want to use hydrogen to achieve our climate goals,” Bryson said.
The “Green Wilhelmshaven,” with its combination of hydrogen import and production, is one of the projects Uniper is proposing to create a common European hydrogen market, and was submitted to the German Federal Ministry of Economics a few weeks ago.