Today, the Netherlands is one of Europe’s biggest liquid natural gas (LNG) importers, taking in hundreds of shipments a year from the USA, Norway, Russia, and further afield. Yet if all goes to plan, then by the 2030s many of the tankers docking there could be carrying a cleaner fuel, one which has never before been shipped in significant quantities – liquid hydrogen made with renewable electricity.
Together with ten other parties, the port of Amsterdam is working to build the world’s first “liquid hydrogen corridor”, to transport the climate-neutral fuel all the way from renewable power plants in the deserts of Oman, via the port of Duqm, to the Netherlands and Germany, where industries plan to use it to make low-carbon chemicals and steel.
Land has already been set aside in Amsterdam for the Greek hydrogen logistics company EcoLog to build a terminal that could take in 200,000 tonnes of the clean fuel every year. The company has designed its own hydrogen tankers to dock there, and intends to have the facility up and running by 2029.
“We’re really trying to replicate what’s happened with LNG,” said Ellen Ruhotas, chief executive of EcoLog. “A bit like how now we import LNG from Qatar or Australia or Malaysia because they’re the cheapest places in the world, the same thing will happen with hydrogen.
“We’re focusing on connecting the places where hydrogen is cheapest, which is those countries where wind and solar energy come together. Really there are only four locations in the world where that happens – northern Africa, Australia, the south of Chile, and the Middle East around the Red Sea and Oman.”
Oman’s “hydrogen orchestrator” Hydrom has already granted development rights to five facilities that will use wind and solar energy to power electrolysers that separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Ruhotas says that Oman will be able to make green hydrogen so cheaply that even once the cost of liquefying and transporting it has been factored in, it will still be cheaper than hydrogen generated in Europe. “Unsubsidised hydrogen made in Europe sits somewhere between 10 and 12 euros a kilo. We can deliver for half that price” she said.
Part of the business case for the hydrogen corridor is that it will work in synergy with EcoLog’s carbon-liquefaction project, also based in the port. When the hydrogen is turned back into a gas, the chill it releases will be used to liquefy carbon dioxide captured from Tata Steel’s Ijmuiden steelworks. The liquid CO2 will then be stored in empty gas fields in the North Sea.
EcoLog also intends to ship liquid hydrogen from Norway, Saudi-Arabia and Spain. These plans represent a step-change for a commodity that has so far only been shipped in small quantities on trial voyages. “We’re trying to create a supply chain that doesn’t exist,” said Ruhotas. “It’s really exciting.”
