Decarbonization is 4.5 gigawatts closer Rapid global decarbon | Tech for Good
Decarbonization is 4.5 gigawatts closer
Rapid global decarbonization is not already looking out of reach, especially with recent developments in the floating wind turbine sector. It has popped out of nowhere just a couple of years ago but has already managed to hook up with the new green hydrogen trend.
Putting a wind turbine on a floating platform is a technologically difficult exercise, but it pays off. The platform may be located in deeper waters farther from shore, where it takes advantage of prime wind speeds and minimizes opposition from coastal communities. And adding green hydrogen generation allows for squeezing the most available juice possible from wind turbines.
Hydrogen is a zero-emission fuel that can be combusted to run turbines or deployed in a fuel cell to generate electricity. At present, though, almost all of the global hydrogen supply comes from natural gas. That's going to change because low-cost renewable energy has improved the economics of hydrogen production, making it financially feasible to "split" hydrogen gas from water with an electrical current.
Since hydrogen acts as a transportable energy storage medium, water-splitting provides a way to salvage excess energy from wind turbines or solar panels. The case for wind turbines is especially strong because winds generally pick up at night when electricity demand goes down.
Into this picture steps a UK venture called Cerulean Winds. Their proposal is billed as the "UK’s largest offshore decarbonization development." It costs £10 billion and includes the construction of at least 200 floating wind turbines with integrated green hydrogen systems in West of Shetland and Central North Sea.
Before we get too excited, one leading aim of the project is to provide clean electricity to existing offshore facilities, namely, offshore oil and gas drilling sites. Cerulean projects that 3 gigawatts in hourly capacity will go to the oil and gas industry. Still, that leaves a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts per hour for green hydrogen production systems to be located onshore.
Cerulean has just submitted a seabed lease request to Marine Scotland, so if anything happens out there in the North Sea it could be a long way off. To speed up the approval process, the company is appealing to the potential for the wind-plus-hydrogen project to create thousands of new green jobs. According to the company’s analysis, over the next five years, the project will help preserve 160,000 oil and gas jobs while adding 200,000 new green jobs.
Source: Cleantechnica
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