German energy firm H2 Industries will be investing $3 billion to establish a waste-to-hydrogen plant in East Port Said, Egypt, chief executive Michael Stusch announced on Monday.
Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) has given H2 Industries preliminary approval for the project.
Once the project is approved, the New York-based company plans to start work immediately over three phases, with the final phase completed within five years.
“We really want to deliver the first green hydrogen [from the plant] at the end of 2025, beginning of 2026,” Stusch stated.
The anticipated plant is expected to absorb about 4 million tonnes of waste annually, between organic waste and non-recyclable plastic. It will have a production capacity of 300 million tonnes of green hydrogen per year.
“The exciting part of the project is that it is the first big-scale, waste-to-hydrogen plant for a huge amount of hydrogen,” Stusch told The National earlier this month.
The project is set to be financed by partners, who will be shareholders in a special purpose vehicle, a legal entity created for a limited purpose.
The one-gigawatt hydrogen centre will be fed with four million tonnes of organic waste and non-recyclable plastic a year secured at the northern Mediterranean entrance to the Suez Canal, he added.
The project is in line with the Egyptian government’s goal to boost the proportion of energy production from new and renewable sources to 20 percent of the total energy production in 2022, to reach 42 percent by 2035.
The Egyptian factory represents the beginning of expansion in the Middle East and North Africa, Stusch said, revealing that H2 Industries is in talks with the UAE and eight African countries to establish similar projects to produce green hydrogen from waste.
“The Suez Canal is, of course, also the perfect location where we can build up the first hydrogen hub in the form of LOHC for synthetic fuels because every tanker passes through the canal,” the official said.
The plant has the added benefit of helping to solve the waste problem, besides creating local jobs. H2 Industries has already reached out to several countries interested in the concept in the past six months.
“Some countries are quicker, some countries are not that quick, and Egypt was very quick in responding,”
“We need more of these projects as soon as possible because we need green hydrogen to stop climate change.” Stusch concluded.
Egypt recently revealed plans for a green ammonia plant with a capacity of 50 megawatts to 100 megawatts in the Suez Canal city of Ain El-Sokhna. It will be developed by Norwegian green energy company Scatec, Abu Dhabi-Dutch joint venture fertiliser producer Fertiglobe, Orascom Construction and the Sovereign Fund of Egypt.
Hydrogen comes in various forms, involving blue, green and grey. Blue and grey hydrogen are derived from natural gas while green hydrogen is generated using renewable sources.
