As Germany seeks to decarbonize and diversify its energy supply, OGE and RWE have laid out plans to rapidly expand the hydrogen industry.
The two unveiled plans for H2ercules, a jointly designed national infrastructure concept that will be able to meet two-thirds of German industrial centers’ hydrogen demand by 2030. It will hasten the development of a German hydrogen industry and infrastructure by connecting electrolyzers, storage, and import facilities in the north with industrial customers in the west and south of the nation. Additional import routes in the south and east are being developed and will be connected by 2030, allowing H2ercules to become the backbone of a hydrogen infrastructure linking the North Sea coast with southern Germany.
The project will cost €3.5 billion, but because most of the H2ercules will be built using converted existing natural gas pipes, it will be completed faster and at a lower cost than if the infrastructure had to be built from scratch.
By 2030, RWE plans to build additional electrolyzers with a combined capacity of up to 1GW. It also plans to import substantial amounts of hydrogen and construct hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants with a capacity of at least 2GW along the planned H2ercules route, as well as connect its gas storage systems near the Dutch border to the hydrogen pipeline. This will be critical in establishing a flexible green backup capacity. Meanwhile, when it transforms existing natural gas pipelines to hydrogen transport and constructs new ones, OGE’s responsibility will be to guarantee that green hydrogen reaches customers. A pipeline network of roughly 1,500 kilometers will be built, which will be integrated into Germany’s hydrogen network planning.
H2ercules will allow Germany to link to key import routes, notably through pipelines in Belgium and the Netherlands at first, followed by Norway and southern and eastern Europe afterward. In the future, it might potentially link through green molecule import terminals in northern Germany, implying that the project could play a crucial role in developing a European hydrogen market.
