HY3. Enabling and balancing the hydrogen infrastructure in North Western Europe
report
North-West Europe, and in particular the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, hosts large, en ergy intensive industrial clusters that contain steel factories, refineries, ammonia plants, steam crackers, chemical industrial plants, and others. These energy-intensive sectors are hard to abate, typically molecule based and all have hydrogen prominently on their decar bonization roadmaps. The region also contains a complete potential hydrogen value chain, from production and import to consumers and large scale storage possibilities. Almost all large multinational companies of the basic industry have one or more significant assets in this region. The decarbonization of this energy and feedstock is high on the agendas of governments and companies that are based in this region. The use of hydrogen is one of the key enablers to decarbonize the region and can complement electricity as an energy source. It allows the large amounts of foreseen wind energy that is to be produced in the North Sea to be trans ported far into the hinterlands of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. A hydrogen network can be used to transport large quantities of hydrogen energy over large distances, potentially re-using existing natural gas pipelines. This can be complemented with imported hydrogen (-carriers) from other parts of the world. Hydrogen carriers (e.g. ammonia) can then be con verted to hydrogen and fed into the hydrogen network. In addition, pilots are currently ongo ing to confirm the potential to store hydrogen at large capacities in salt caverns
Topics
TNO Identifier
1006589
Publisher
TNO
Collation
86 p.
Place of publication
Rijswijk