bp and Ørsted signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to work together to develop a ‎project for industrial-scale production of green hydrogen via the electrolysis of water using ‎renewable power, producing zero emissions.

In their proposed Lingen Green Hydrogen project, the two firms intend to build an initial 50 ‎megawatt (MW) electrolyzer and associated infrastructure at bp’s Lingen Refinery in north-‎west Germany. This will be powered by renewable energy generated by an Ørsted offshore ‎wind farm in the North Sea and the hydrogen produced will be used in the refinery.‎

Lingen Refinery

Under their LOI, bp and Ørsted will now work together to further define the project, agree ‎definitive documents and plan to make a final investment decision (FID) early 2022, subject ‎to appropriate enabling policies being in place. The companies anticipate the project could be ‎operational by 2024.

Electrolysis splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. When powered by renewable ‎energy, this produces ‘green’ hydrogen, without generating direct carbon emissions. ‎Hydrogen is widely used in refinery processes where—as in Lingen—it is now typically ‎produced by reforming natural gas, which does result in CO₂ emissions. This is also known ‎as ‘grey’ hydrogen.‎

The 50 MW electrolyzer project is expected to produce one tonne an hour of green ‎hydrogen or almost 9,000 tonnes a year. This would be sufficient to replace around 20% of ‎the refinery’s current grey hydrogen consumption, avoiding around 80,000 tonnes of CO₂ ‎equivalent emissions a year—equivalent to the emissions from around 45,000 cars in ‎Germany.

In the coming decades, hydrogen is expected to play a critical role in decarbonizing the ‎power, industry and transport sectors, especially those that are hard-to-electrify or ‎expensive-to-electrify. The development of businesses in emerging technologies such as ‎hydrogen and carbon capture use and storage (CCUS) is an integral part of bp’s strategy of ‎transforming to an integrated energy company.‎

Renewable hydrogen has to become cost ‎competitive with fossil-based hydrogen, and for that we need projects such as this with bp’s ‎Lingen refinery.

—Martin Neubert, executive vice president and CEO of offshore wind, Ørsted

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In addition to green hydrogen production, bp and Ørsted intend to focus on maximizing the ‎efficiency of the project’s electrolysis system, including assessing sustainable uses for the ‎main by-products of the process, primarily oxygen and low-grade excess heat.‎

The project is also intended to support a longer-term ambition to build more than 500MW of ‎renewable-powered electrolysis capacity at Lingen. This could provide green hydrogen to ‎both meet all the refinery’s hydrogen demand and provide feedstock for potential future ‎synthetic fuel production.

bp and Ørsted have together applied for funding for the Lingen Green Hydrogen project from ‎the EU Innovation Fund—one of the largest funding programs for innovative low carbon ‎technologies, focusing particularly on energy-intensive industries.

The Lingen Refinery processes about five million tonnes of crude oil a year (~100,000 barrels ‎a day), producing fuels, heating oil and chemical feedstocks. In 2018 Lingen conducted the ‎world’s first trial of green hydrogen in a fuels refinery.‎