Uniper is planning to establish a German national hub for hydrogen in Wilhelmshaven and is working on a corresponding feasibility study.
On 14 April, it announced its plans for Green Wilhelmshaven, including an import terminal for green ammonia which would be equipped with an “ammonia cracker” that can produce green hydrogen and will also be connected to the planned hydrogen network. A 410MW electrolysis plant is also part of the plans which, combined with the import terminal, could provide 10% of the demand expected for the whole of Germany in 2030.
Uniper COO, David Bryson, said: “We need to get hydrogen out of the laboratory and start using it in large-scale applications and marketable industrial solutions — we should make it into a commodity and exploit its wide variety of uses. One way of achieving this is to import green ammonia and convert it into hydrogen, which is something we are looking at for Wilhelmshaven.”
The hydrogen produced will be mainly used to supply local industry, though could be fed into the national hydrogen network, contributing to security of supply. The ammonia splitting plant for producing green hydrogen will be the first scaled plant of its kind, with commissioning of the new terminal planned for the second half of the decade – dependent on national import demand and export opportunities.
Bryson added: “Currently, Germany plans to generate 14TWh of green hydrogen in 2030, but the demand for that year is forecast to be 90–100TWh — the discrepancy between these two figures is abundantly clear. We will be heavily dependent on imports if we want to use hydrogen to help us achieve our climate goals.”
