2023-09-14 04:00:25
Hydeal Spain has modified its plans to supply green hydrogen to the ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia plants in Asturias. Initially, the business alliance planned to begin supply in 2025, but now its schedule has been delayed until 2028. In addition, the ambitious deployment of solar parks and electrolyzers projected mainly in Castilla y León is reduced and the installed power will be half of the announced.
ArcelorMittal intends to replace one of its two blast furnaces in Gijón with a direct reduction iron ore plant (DRI system) using green hydrogen and a hybrid electric arc furnace. For its part, Fertiberia intends to produce ammonia in Corvera also with green hydrogen. To carry out these decarbonization plans, ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia participated in the constitution of the Hydeal Spain consortium, which was presented in February 2022 with the ambitious objective of starting to produce green hydrogen in 2025 to supply the Asturian industry and which hoped to have with a total installed capacity of 9.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy that would supply electricity to 7.4 GW of electrolysis power by 2030.
That the production forecasts were very optimistic was already proven when in the DRI plant project being processed by ArcelorMittal it was already noted that in the event of not having a supply of hydrogen at a competitive price, the facilities would provisionally use natural gas. In addition, the planning managed by Enagás points to 2026 as the earliest date to be able to launch the works on the Vía de la Plata hydroduct, vital for transporting green hydrogen from Castilla y León to Asturias.
In this context, Hydeal Spain has modified its planning. It now expects green hydrogen production to begin in 2028, three years later than the initial date, and for total installed capacity to reach 4.8 GW of solar energy and 3.3 GW of electrolyzers, half of what was planned. HyDeal Spain now expects to supply 3 million tons of green hydrogen over 20 years to the main hydrogen consumers in the north and east of Spain at a price competitive with fossil fuels, when initially that estimated supply was 6.6 million tons. Henry Luarca, founder and president of the Humedal Ambición platform, will make reference to this new planning today during his conference at the World Hydrogen & Renewables Iberia held in Madrid.
Both ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia have signed pre-agreements with another hydrogen producer (Robla Hub, formed by Naturgy and Enagás) for supply.
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