Eneco has submitted its planning application for the construction of the ‘Eneco Electrolyzer’, a green hydrogen production plant in Rotterdam’s Europoort industrial area. Green hydrogen is produced using electricity generated by renewable energy. Eneco is working together with Mitsubishi on this through the Eneco Diamond Hydrogen joint venture. By building the plant, Eneco can help industrial customers make their processes and products more sustainable.

“Producing green hydrogen is essential for a successful energy transition”, said Eneco CEO As Tempelman. “When direct electrification is not possible, green hydrogen is a good and sustainable alternative, both as a raw material and as a fuel. Investing in green hydrogen is an important part of our strategy and it pleases me that we can now take concrete steps towards this.”

An electrolyser is a hydrogen plant that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. The Eneco Electrolyser will use renewable energy from solar parks and wind farms to produce clean hydrogen that’s initially aimed towards the industrial sector. At the moment, the sector uses natural gas – a fossil fuel – to produce hydrogen. Moreover, hydrogen could eventually replace natural gas as a fuel in the industrial and electricity sectors and play a part in more flexible production of electricity.

The Eneco Electrolyzer will be developed next to the Enecogen power station in Europoort. This location means the two facilities can share some infrastructure, which has advantages with regards to costs and realisation time. The Eneco Electrolyzer will have a capacity of eventually 800 megawatts. This means it will be able to produce up to 80 kilotonnes of hydrogen every year, depending on the amount of renewable energy available and the demand for green hydrogen from the industrial sector.

This is significantly larger than the capacity of other green hydrogen plants that are currently in operation or under development in Europe. For example, the largest green hydrogen plant in Europe currently operating is the Ørsted electrolyzer in Denmark, which has a capacity of 200 megawatts.

Improving the sustainability of industrial customers is in keeping with Eneco’s One Planet Plan, which aims to make Eneco and all its customers climate neutral by 2035. In addition, the Netherlands and Europe have set targets for the production of green hydrogen. The Netherlands, for example, intends to increase green hydrogen production capacity to 4 gigawatts by 2030. 

Additionally, the Netherlands has set a target of increasing green hydrogen production capacity to 4 gigawatts by 2030. The Eneco Electrolyzer alone would account for 20% of this target.

Therefore, it is likely that the Eneco Electrolyzer will be the largest green hydrogen plant in Europe once it is completed in 2029.

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Eneco has submitted its planning application now in the expectation that it will be able to work towards building the Eneco Electrolyzer over the next few years. Construction is scheduled to start in 2026, and the hydrogen plant is currently scheduled to start operating in 2029.