HYDROGEN HUB
Northern Ireland has world class renewable electricity resources but the challenge is how intermittent energy production can be matched with demand. This requires long duration energy storage and at a large scale.
One option being pursued in other jurisdictions, including Great Britain and Ireland, is using excess renewable electrical energy to produce green hydrogen, which is a more versatile energy carrier that supports long-term storage as well as reduce dispatch down (where renewable generation is curtailed due to a lack of sufficient electricity demand).
Fortunately, Northern Ireland has a ‘golden ticket’ when it comes to potential for the production and storage of green hydrogen. As well as abundant renewable energy resources, we also have significant underground salt cavern storage potential. However, we need a cluster or hub initiative to ‘kick-start’ hydrogen demand.
The idea of a hub is to develop a self-contained hydrogen economy within a specified geographical region. These regions contain hydrogen production, transportation, and storage infrastructure, as well as end user demand.
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With the right policy support, Northern Ireland could develop a hydrogen hub within the Greater Belfast area.
Offshore wind farms are expected to connect to the onshore grid at Ballylumford and Kilroot. Large-scale, centralised, electrolytic green hydrogen production at these locations could then be connected to salt cavern storage at Islandmagee.
With a pipeline of less than 35km, a hydrogen network could help facilitate and support decarbonisation of the Greater Belfast conurbation, two out of three of Northern Ireland’s gas fired power stations, as well as Larne and Belfast ports and Belfast City Airport.
Mutual Energy has collaborated with B9 Energy and other partners on a number of projects that have helped further development of the Greater Belfast hydrogen hub concept.
The Ballylumford Power to X project, funded by BEIS in 2022, investigated how green hydrogen production could be utilised with hydrogen storage to help support decarbonisation of transportation and dispatchable power generation in Northern Ireland. Combining hydrogen storage with dispatchable power generation are key components of the hydrogen hub concept.
The Maritime Power to X project, funded by DESNZ in 2024, explored how green methanol production in Northern Ireland, utilising indigenously produced green hydrogen and captured CO2, could be used as a zero-emission fuel to decarbonise maritime shipping corridors between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Local production of green hydrogen based e-fuels offers a potential means to quickly scale up demand for green hydrogen production in Northern Ireland.
To find out more about the hydrogen hub concept and other hydrogen projects, please visit:
https://www.mutual-energy.com/news/a-greater-belfast-green-hydrogen-hub/
