In the Wesel neighborhood, green hydrogen will be promoted.
The potential of hydrogen as an energy source is high. especially when it is created using renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Many framework criteria are still up in the air because certain things are still so far off. The Wesel district, however, favors moving forward: Since 2021, representatives from business, the district, and municipalities have regularly exchanged ideas. Most recently, they did so in the district house during the fifth network meeting “H2 Niederrhein Kreis Wesel,” which had over 70 attendees. Projects are coming together, and the first dates are in the house, it was made plain.
The first 20 hydrogen-powered trucks are expected to hit the road in 2024, according to the Richter Group. The businesses Nikola and Eon collaborate with the Wesel-based logistics firm. According to Christian Benigni (Nikola Energy), at the network conference, a sizable portion of carbon dioxide emissions are attributable to the transportation of freight by road. Only 6% of roads were used by trucks, but they were responsible for 26% of CO2 emissions.
The Richter Company in Wesel plans to gradually convert its whole fleet of 160 vehicles over the next few years rather than stopping at just 20 trucks. Uncertainty around the framework circumstances makes such an entrepreneurial choice risky, according to Marc Schwarzlose from the medium-sized company. Nowadays, 80% of the additional costs for a hydrogen-powered truck are covered by subsidies.
Voerde has had plans for a second project for some time. Using the Steag plant in Möllen, which was shut down in 2017, RWE plans to manufacture green hydrogen. Although final choices have not been made, the plans appear solid: dismantling should begin on the site in the middle of this year. According to RWE, the potential of developing an electrolysis plant with an initial capacity of 400 megawatts is being explored. By doing so, it would be feasible to separate water into its component parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The earliest this might happen is in 2027. A gas power plant that can run on hydrogen is something else to think about.
The example of an H2 filling station also demonstrated how projects might sometimes be implemented more swiftly in the Netherlands than in Germany. Such a filling station has previously been established in the adjacent nation by Kuster Energy, which has offices in Kleve, Germany, and Babberich, the Netherlands.
Directly from the circle also comes important technologies. A mass flow meter for applications involving hydrogen was introduced by the Neukirchen-Vluyn-based Schwing firm. Boris Bosselmann and Wolfgang Ringel explained that this might be employed to measure extraordinarily high flow velocities. As an example, the speed of air is 300 meters per second and hydrogen is 1400 meters per second. The tool can be applied, for instance, to industry or refueling. Yet, there are still unresolved issues in this case, such as the acceptance’s legal foundation.
