Security and resilience of infrastructure for offshore production and transport of green hydrogen

Kurzfassung

Green hydrogen is seen as an important tool to decarbonise energy-intensive industries, such as heavy industry, shipping and aviation. Consequently, its demand is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. Because many highly industrialised and populated regions of the world, such as North- West Europe, have limited possibilities to increase their local onshore production of green hydrogen, it is expected that a significant number of new offshore production facilities will be needed in addition to increased imports. This is particularly true for Germany, where green hydrogen produced from offshore wind is expected to become of great strategic importance. The expansion of offshore production of green hydrogen will naturally also require new transport infrastructure including both subsea pipelines and maritime transport infrastructure. As there is a general lack of hydrogen pipelines in Germany, and as there are at the same time significant political, legal and other challenges to the construction of new land-based pipelines, especially through densely populated areas, we expect a growing demand for non-pipeline transport options for transportation within Germany. In practice, any such option involves hydrogen carrier ships and port-based infrastructure, such as loading and unloading systems and intermediate port-based storages.