León will supply green hydrogen to the Asturian industry. Naturgy and Enagás Renovables will invest 485 million euros in the old La Robla coal-fired power plant to produce green hydrogen for the ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia plants in Asturias and for the cement factory run by the Asturian company Tudela Veguín, of the Masaveu group , has in the Leonese town. In addition, another Asturian company, Alsa, will use hydrogen for sustainable mobility projects.
Directors of Naturgy and Enagás Renovables, accompanied, among others, by the Secretary of State for Energy of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Sara Aagesenand the director of the Institute for Just Transition, Laura Martin Murillopresented yesterday in La Robla the project for the construction of a renewable hydrogen plant whose production capacity will reach up to 280 megawatts (MW).
This new plant, whose start-up is scheduled for 2026, will be located on the land of the old Naturgy thermal power plant, which is currently in the process of being dismantled. Naturgy and Enagás Renovable have already launched the Robla Hub joint venture to carry out the project.
The presentation of the plan was given by the CEO of Enagás Renovable, Anton Martinezand the director of New Businesses of Naturgy, Silvia Sanjoaquin. According to sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the promoters informed the Secretary of State that the signing of collaboration agreements with ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia as renewable hydrogen consumer partners made it possible to increase the production capacity of the electrolysis plant from the original 60 MW to 280 MW, making the factory the largest renewable hydrogen project in the Vía de la Plata corridor and one of the first large-scale plants associated with the Spanish H2Med network, the hydrogen pipeline that will link Portugal, Spain and France and that will pass through Asturias.
Neither ArcelorMittal nor Fertiberia yesterday wanted to comment on the details of the agreement with the Robla Hub company. Both the steel and fertilizer companies participate together with Enagás Renovables (and also with DH2 Energy and Soladvent) in the HyDeal Spain business alliance to supply green hydrogen to Asturian factories, generating it with electrolysers located in León, Zamora and Aragón and close to solar plants that will feed them with renewable energy. Nor did Enagás want to clarify whether the two projects to supply hydrogen to the ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia plants in Asturias, which would both use the Vía de la Plata hydrogen pipeline, are compatible or even integrated.
Sources consulted with knowledge of the operation indicated that the agreement is not yet fully closed and expressed their surprise to learn that it had been disseminated by the Ministry for Ecological Transition while it is still being negotiated.
The development of the La Robla renewable hydrogen production plant will be associated with the start-up of a photovoltaic solar generation project made up of several parks located in neighboring municipalities and whose total capacity is around 450 MW. These parks are in different stages of processing.
The project, in addition to being focused on the large steel and fertilizer industry in Asturias, also seeks to be a development vector in León, supporting the decarbonization of activities in the area, for which it has a series of potential consumers in industry, such as the factory that the Asturian company Cementos Tudela Veguín has in La Robla. Likewise, from Naturgy and Enagás they indicated that sustainable mobility actions are planned in León, such as those promoted by the Asturian company Alsa for interurban lines in the province.
The Secretary of State for Energy, Sara Aagesen, remarked that “the development of renewable hydrogen is a key tool in the just transition and this fact happens because it constitutes, in turn, a reindustrialization vector.” The CEO of Enagás Renovable, Antón Martínez, highlighted that “it will allow us to support the decarbonisation of the industries in the area, which will also be able to benefit from the efficiencies generated by the increase in production capacity”. For her part, Silvia Sanjoaquín, director of New Businesses at Naturgy, pointed out that the project will allow the development of renewable hydrogen production, promoting a quantitative leap to develop economies of scale and improve competitiveness.”
HyDeal will be able to use existing renewable parks to power its electrolyzers
The HyDeal Spain consortium, which will supply green hydrogen in industrial quantities for ArcelorMittal and Fertiberia in Asturias, just like the project announced yesterday in La Robla, will be able to use already existing renewable energy generation plants to feed the electrolysers. This possibility, already studied by the consortium, will be possible if the delegated acts –proposals from the European Commission that must be approved or rejected by the European Parliament and the Council, but without the possibility of modification– on green hydrogen published this week are ratified . In order to consider renewable hydrogen, even with a direct connection to a wind or solar plant, some premises must be met, such as that the electricity be “additional” –newly created– to avoid sequestering electricity that currently serves to supply homes or industry, which which would make their bills more expensive and could generate the opposite effect of greater use of fossil energy sources. However, the delegated act published by the EC establishes a transition phase in which additionality does not apply (until 2039) provided that the facilities have been commissioned before June 2028, the date on which HyDeal Spain plans to have its facilities up and running (the goal is to start producing in 2025). In addition, the facilities are forced to be in the same supply zone (“bidding zone”), which for practical purposes means that the production (hydrogen) and consumption (renewable) facilities are in the same country, since the production of hydrogen is produced in the same calendar month as the production of renewable electricity until December 31, 2029, from which time the temporal correlation will begin to be hourly. The European Commission estimates that around 500 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity are needed to meet the 2030 target of producing 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen on the continent, corresponding to 14% of total electricity consumption in the European Union. This ambition is reflected in the Commission’s proposal to increase the renewable energy target for 2030 to 45%.