One Gigawatt Green Hydrogen Plant

One Gigawatt Green Hydrogen Plant

The Hydrohub GigaWatt-Scale Electrolyzer project has produced an advanced design for such a 1-GW green-hydrogen plant, which would use alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) and polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) water electrolysis, and which could start up in 2030.

This advanced design builds on a previous state-of-the-art 2020 baseline design,1 and foresees a considerable drop in investment costs (CAPEX). Consequently, the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) is expected to come down in the lead-up to 2030, and to continue its decline thereafter. Still, more needs to be done to create a competitive green-hydrogen market.

We present the technical design and the associated total investment costs of a greenfield 1-GW green-hydrogen plant that would be built, and up and running, in a Dutch port area by 2030. This project shows that anticipated total investment cost levels of 730 €/kW or 1580 €/(kg/d) for AWE

and 830 €/kW or 1770 €/(kg/d) for PEM are within reach. The CAPEX required will be about half of what would be required for the 2020 state-of-the-art design. To come to this cost reduction, several improvements have been made to the state-of-the-art 2020 design. We incorporated innovations at the stack level, scaling up to larger stacks and modules, and came up with optimizations for, and other improvements to, the electrical installations, utilities, and balance of plants.

Finance for the Green Economy