Europe Looks to Australia for Green Hydrogen

Nowadays, hydrogen has been identified as a promising renewable and clean energy source by many countries. Europe’s biggest hydrogen project is currently stepping up its search for Australia’s imports of green hydrogen to provide clean energy, then cutting the reliance on Russian natural gas.

The project was announced last Wednesday, June 29th, by Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte with energy giant Shell executives at the Port of Rotterdam. Shell has committed to building Europe’s biggest hydrogen generation scheme. It aims to provide stored energy from wind power in the North Sea.

Australia is currently competing with other countries to produce hydrogen from solar and wind power at enough scale to export energy in vast quantities to meet a European Union goal of using 20 million tonnes of hydrogen each year by 2030.

Allard Castelein, President of the Port of Rotterdam, believes Australia could produce hydrogen at a competitive price due to the cost profile of its renewable energy sources, even after adding the cost of shipping to the Netherlands. Besides, Australia is a very efficient area to produce green hydrogen.

The Port of Rotterdam handles around 13% of Europe’s fossil fuel imports, but it is turning rapidly to clean energy, including hydrogen imports and domestic power generation. Commercial production and import of hydrogen are planned to start from 2025 in order to scale up to 4.6 million tonnes per year from 2030, about one-quarter of the forecast for the EU.