Can industries harness the unceasing kinetic power of the ocean to meet demand for green energy?
BW Offshore-backed SwitcH2 and CorPower Ocean believe they can as part of a partnership to produce green ammonia at sea with electricity generated from wave power.
The plan would supply that electricity to a floating production, storage and offloading unit that SwitcH2 plans to build in Asia and then site off the coast of Portugal. Power will also come from solar and wind, but CorPower’s wave energy systems will help provide a stable baseload.
The FPSO, which is expected to be the size of a VLCC, will have a 300-MW electrolysis plant on deck that will produce green hydrogen that will then be converted into green ammonia.
CorPower commercial director Kevin Rebenius said his company had been for large-scale projects that need the baseload stability that wave power provides compared to more variable solar and wind power.
Producing green hydrogen and green ammonia fits the bill because wave power can help ensure high utilisation of an electrolyser.
“Wave can have a great contribution and value of adding that stabilising piece to the mix,” he told the Green Seas podcast.
SwitcH2 is backed by BW Offshore and Dutch Oceans Capital, and the company is looking to do in the green fuels sector what BW Offshore did in oil and gas by delivering energy from offshore.
Ammonia shuttles
The Portugal FPSO’s output will be shuttled to shore by ammonia carriers, potentially for use as a shipping fuel.
Bob Rietveldt, technical director and co-founder of SwitcH2, said the planned vessel is an example of a solution that can turn renewable energy into a form that is transportable. After all, some places have more renewable resources than they have demand for it, and other places have demand but not enough renewable energy that can be produced economically.
“You need to transport that electricity,” he said, noting that you cannot move electricity by grid from North Africa to Europe.
That energy can be transported by hydrogen in places, like the North Sea, where there is a pipeline network.
But elsewhere, converting hydrogen into ammonia is easier, as the commodity has been carried by ships for four decades.
He said harnessing wave energy to produce that energy allows the use of renewable energy all day long, without the need to turn to fossil fuels when the wind is not blowing or the sun is down.
Converting to ammonia also deals with the problem of electricity grid congestion.
Portugal brought the two companies together. CorPower Ocean was working on a demonstration project off the country’s coast, and SwitcH2 was looking at Portuguese waters for its FPSO.
Rietveldt said the CorPower solution, in the form of an array of wave energy converters, would fit well around his company’s FPSO.
Deals at both ends
SwitcH2 plans to bring the whole project together by signing agreements with green power providers like CorPower and forging offtake deals with buyers of ammonia.
“A project like this … becomes a bankable offshore project, which is financed in the ways offshore projects have all been financed.”
The company plans to take a financial investment decision by the end of 2025, which will be followed by four years of construction. First ammonia is targeted for 2029.
“And that would coincide very well with what we see happening in the market,” he said.
Rietveldt noted that ammonia has advantages over hydrogen because it has an existing market, primarily supporting the fertiliser industry.
“That is the first market that needs to be decarbonised, but then we see the potential for ammonia as shipping fuel — say, from 2030 onwards,” he said.
Shipping demand could increase the ammonia market sixfold from today’s 185m tonnes per year.
The FPSO would produce 300,000 tonnes per year.
For both companies, Portugal is a great place to start plugging wave energy into Europe’s efforts to decarbonise.
Rebenius said the country has great wave and wind resources, and the government has targets for both.
Renewable fuel rules
The European Union’s renewable fuels directives also leads to the need for more green electricity.
“You really need to have new types of renewable installations coming online to meet this demand,” he said.
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