It is often touted as part of the solution to Europe’s energy future, but is Ireland really on track to be part of a green hydrogen ‘revolution’?
Hydrogen is a powerful and explosive gas, but in recent years scientists believe they have been able to work out how to use it safely.
There are now hydrogen buses, trucks and even trains across Europe.
The advantage of hydrogen is its chemical tenancies: When combined with oxygen it releases energy and gives off water.
No pollution.
But making more hydrogen requires huge amounts of energy and if you use fossil fuels to do it, it cancels out hydrogen’s environmental advantage.
The solution is so-called green hydrogen. That means using spare renewable energy from wind turbines and solar farms to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen.
In 2023, the Irish government published the National Hydrogen Strategy.
It included the aspiration of producing hydrogen from 2GW of offshore wind from 2030.
When the strategy was published back in 2023, there were two projects aiming to get up and running.
We have contacted Mercury Renewables for an update on the Firlough Wind Farm and Green Hydrogen project and Bord na Móna (BnM) about progress on their plans for a Hydrogen Electrolysis Plant in Mount Lucas in County Offaly.
It is understood that the Mount Lucas project is still planned, although there have been no updates on its progress for some time.
Mercury Renewables did not respond to our enquiries about the Firlough protect.
Dr Rory Monaghan, is Professor in Energy Systems Engineering at the University of Galway and co-ordinator of the SH2AMROCK Hydrogen Valley project.
SH2AMROCK is one of a number of EU funded projects to help bring green hydrogen into production.
But Professor Monaghan fears Ireland is falling behind.
“Ireland has a huge potential to be a major producer of green hydrogen. We have only just begun to even consider tapping into our offshore wind resources”, he told Karen Coleman of EU News Radio at the European Hydrogen Valleys summit last week.
“We could produce far more energy than we could ever dream of using in Ireland, and we could not only make hydrogen for ourselves, but export hydrogen to the rest of Europe.
So the potential is there, and we have a great policy in Ireland. We have a National Hydrogen Strategy, but implementing this strategy has been extremely slow, and we’re far behind on that.
And it just means that projects like ours, first mover projects like the SH2AMROCK Hydrogen Valley, are finding it difficult to keep momentum when we can’t see that that implementation of policy is happening in good time.”
We put his concerns to the government. A spokesperson for the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment responded:
“The National Hydrogen Strategy and the Future Framework for Offshore Renewable Energy are both clear that production of renewable hydrogen will occur post-2030.
As per the National Hydrogen Strategy, the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment will explore and develop routes to markets as needed. Both policy documents set out the actions to be undertaken, over a multi-year period, to ensure that appropriate frameworks and policy signals are in place to facilitate the development of this offshore wind capacity.
This work will be further developed under the new National Hydrogen Programme Taskforce, which is working to oversee the implementation of the National Hydrogen Strategy actions.”
The Department commissioned a report last year to explore the potential for exporting hydrogen from Ireland to continental Europe.
The report concluded that “Ireland’s hydrogen production potential is much larger than the expected domestic demand.”
It suggested that an existing pipeline between Ireland and France could be “repurposed” for hydrogen.
If demand is high, this would be the cheapest option, if demand is lower, Ireland should set up facilities to export hydrogen by ship, the authors advised.
But developing new technology is expensive and success is not guaranteed.
Germany has spent billions on hydrogen project.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said Germany is “overbuilding” and wasting tens of billions of Euro in taxpayer funding.
IEEFA expects Germany’s 2045 hydrogen demand to be “at or below the lower end of official scenario ranges.”
Meanwhile, the European Commission continues to support new hydrogen projects across Europe.
Last week it announced an additional €1 billion in funding for seven new projects in Greece, Spain, Denmark and Austria.
The SH2AMROCK project in Ireland aims to deploy green hydrogen across “key hard-to-abate sectors across the island of Ireland”.
The five year-project is being supported with €80 million in public funding.