Multinational energy company TotalEnergies has signed an offtake agreement with German developer RWE which will supply 30,000 tonnes a year of green hydrogen to the Leuna refinery for 15 years from 2030.
The green hydrogen will be produced by a 300 megawatt (MW) electrolyser, built and operated by RWE in Lingen with hydrogen storage provided locally.
The gas will be delivered via a 600km pipeline to the refinery. It marks the largest quantity of green hydrogen ever contracted in Germany.
Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, said it is developing its partnership with RWE, which it already works with on several offshore wind projects in Germany and the Netherlands.
“This long-term contract for green hydrogen marks an important milestone to reducing our CO2 emissions at our Leuna refinery,” he said. He noted the project was provisional on the completion of the European Hydrogen Backbone in Germany.
Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE, said the company was pleased to have acquired an anchor customer six months after the investment decision for the 300MW electrolysis Lingen plant. “This shows that hydrogen works with the right incentives for customers,” he said.
Source: RWE
RWE is testing two electrolysis technologies under industrial conditions in the pilot plant.
Dresden-based manufacturer Sunfire has installed an alkaline electrolyser with a capacity of 10MW. Four modules, each weighing 15 tonnes, were assembled in a specially constructed hall to form two ‘stacks’ almost 10m long; and Linde Engineering has designed and built a 4MW plant with a PEM electrolyser from ITM Power.
As part of the GET H2 Nukleus project, a 100MW electrolyser is to be commissioned this year, with its capacity increasing to 300MW by 2027.
To decarbonise the hydrogen TotalEnergies uses in its European refineries, it has already contracted over 200,000 tonnes of various forms of green and renewable hydrogen a year for its sites at La Mède, Grandpuits and Normandy in France, in Leuna in Germany, for its northern European refineries, and in Antwerp in Belgium and Zeeland in the Netherlands.
The company is clearly ramping up its clean energy commitments. Together with industrial gas major Air Liquide, it recently announced it is investing over €1bn in two large-scale green hydrogen projects in the Netherlands.
The ‘ELYgator’ project, utilising a 200MW electrolyser in Rotterdam, will produce up to 23,000 tonnes of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen per year from 2027, powered by offshore wind.
A second project, a 250MW electrolyser in Zeeland, will produce up to 30,000 tonnes annually under similar conditions from 2029.
Another new development concerns the commissioning of the BioNorrois biomethane facility in Fontaine-le-Dun in Normandy. This is its eighth biomethane production unit in France – raising its biogas production capacity in the country to more than 800 GWh.
Last summer, TotalEnergies signed a 15-year agreement with Air Products for the annual supply in Europe of 70,000 tonnes of green hydrogen starting in 2030.
