A partnership agreement between Lhyfe and Nantes – Saint Nazaire Port, the fourth-largest seaport in France, has been established in order to advance the offshore renewable sector and the Loire Estuary’s energy transition.
As with offshore wind power, hydrogen will be required to play a more significant role in the French and European energy mix thanks to the strong momentum created by the national policy for the development of carbon-free hydrogen in France.
The world’s first offshore renewable hydrogen production prototype, with a capacity of 1 MW and a connection to a floating wind turbine, will be delivered by Lhyfe’s Sealhyfe project, which was launched at the end of September in the Saint Nazaire dock basins.
Lhyfe already runs a water electrolysis-based sustainable hydrogen production facility and intends to build comparable onshore facilities across Europe. The Company is increasing its research and development investments for the development of offshore renewable hydrogen production as close as possible to offshore energy sources and is considering the idea of developing and operating offshore renewable hydrogen production platforms on existing fixed structures or on fixed-position or floating foundations. The offshore sector may bring an extra 3 GW of installed capacity to Lhyfe by 2030–2035.
The port of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire is firmly dedicated to the energy transformation in Greater Western France on a number of fronts. The Port Authority is concentrating on future energy sources and researching potential hydrogen deployment scenarios inside its port ecosystem with the goal of making Nantes-Saint-Nazaire the first significant hydrogen port facility on France’s Atlantic Seaboard.
Combining Knowledge
Nantes Saint Nazaire Port and Lhyfe have naturally decided to combine their efforts and areas of expertise in order to find, evaluate, and assess the circumstances for the formation of a supply chain related to offshore hydrogen generation, supported by their convergent future visions.
The goal of this collaboration is to discover the port locations and infrastructure that can house R&D prototypes and be used to test out novel ideas. The cooperation also focuses on identifying the industrial needs necessary to build the machinery that will be utilized to manufacture offshore hydrogen on a large scale, as well as on the port infrastructures required for the development, launch, and integration of those future pieces of machinery. The two parties will next discuss the best way to specify the necessary industrial and logistical needs for the reception and injection of the gas into the land-based network while bringing the renewable hydrogen mass-produced at sea ashore.
