Two innovative projects with RWE involvement have been pre-selected for funding by the EU Innovation Fund - one of the world's largest programmes for demonstrating innovative low-carbon technologies.
These are RWE's FUREC project in the Netherlands and an offshore wind farm off the German coast, in whose project company Nordsee Two GmbH RWE holds a 51% stake. The two projects are among a total of 17 projects selected by the EU Innovation Fund for the preparation of grant agreements, which is now underway.
The EU Innovation Fund subsidises breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage and carbon capture, use and storage.
The selected projects with RWE participation are:
FUREC: Under the name FUREC (Fuse Reuse Recycle), RWE wants to produce hydrogen for the chemical industry and thus contribute to making production processes more sustainable. Household waste from Limburg in the Netherlands is to replace natural gas. The FUREC project supports companies, scientific institutes and the province in their efforts to develop Limburg into a centre for the circular economy and a hydrogen hub between the Dutch seaports and the German Ruhr area. For FUREC, a plant is being built in Limburg to process residual materials into raw material pellets. These will then be converted into hydrogen in another plant in Limburg's Chemelot industrial park, which will be supplied to OCI Nitrogen's fertiliser plants. In this way, the industrial park's natural gas consumption is reduced by more than 280 million cubic metres annually. This corresponds to the annual consumption of about 200,000 households. In this way, the emission of about 500,000 tonnes of CO2 can be avoided per year. The CO2 released during hydrogen production can be captured and stored or possibly used as a raw material in the future. The hydrogen can be marketed locally in the Chemelot industrial park or transported to industrial companies in Rotterdam and the Ruhr area via a corresponding hydrogen infrastructure.
Nordsee Two: RWE (51%) is developing an offshore wind farm off the German coast together with its Canadian partner Northland Power (49%). The wind farm with a planned grid capacity of 433 megawatts (MW) is to be built north of the island of Juist and is scheduled to start commercial operation in 2026. Together, the partners are driving technological advancements in the offshore wind industry. In addition to the newest and most innovative wind turbines
(min 15 MW each), the partners aim to demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility of producing hydrogen at sea. For this purpose, an electrolyser is planned to be integrated into the offshore wind farm. The green hydrogen could then be used for vessel fueling and to supply emergency power to the offshore substation or wind turbines.