Under the name "Green Wilhelmshaven," Uniper plans to establish a German national hub for hydrogen in Wilhelmshaven and is working on a corresponding feasibility study.

An import terminal for green ammonia is planned. The terminal is planned to be equipped with an ammonia cracker for producing green hydrogen and will also be connected to the planned hydrogen network. A 410-megawatt electrolysis plant is also planned, which – in combination with the import terminal - would be capable of supplying around 295,000 metric tons or 10% of the demand expected for the whole of Germany in 2030.

The generated climate friendly hydrogen will primarily be used to supply local industry, but it will also be possible to feed it into the national hydrogen network.

David Bryson, COO, Uniper said, "We need to get hydrogen out of the laboratory and start using it in large-scale applications and marketable industrial solutions — we should make it into a commodity and exploit its wide variety of uses. One way of achieving this is to import green ammonia and convert it into hydrogen, which is something we are looking at for Wilhelmshaven. Currently, Germany plans to generate 14 TWh of green hydrogen in 2030, but the demand for that year is forecast to be 90-100 TWh — the discrepancy between these two figures is abundantly clear. We will be heavily dependent on imports if we want to use hydrogen to help us achieve our climate goals."

Green Wilhelmshaven with its combination of hydrogen import and production is one of the projects Uniper is proposing to create a common European hydrogen market and submitted to the German Federal Ministry of Economics a few weeks ago as an "Important Project of Common European Interest" (IPCEI).

Dr. Axel Wietfeld, CEO, Uniper Hydrogen said, "One sector in which hydrogen can play a crucial role in reducing CO2 emissions is steel production. Currently, each metric ton of crude steel produced releases approximately one metric ton of CO2 emissions. Hydrogen is the only realistic option for decarbonizing this industry."