(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc secured funding in Germany to proceed with a green hydrogen plant, the first to be fully owned and operated by the UK oil major.
The hydrogen, made from water and renewable electricity, will be used at BP’s Lingen refinery and by local industries, the company said in a statement. BP recently scaled back plans for biofuels production at Lingen, the smaller of its two refineries in Germany.
The clean hydrogen initiative, set to produce as much as 11,000 tons of the fuel a year, was among projects to receive funds Monday as the country’s government accelerates plans to move away from natural gas and coal.
BP first outlined plans for a green hydrogen electrolyzer at Lingen in 2020, together with Orsted A/S. Four years on and the project has been expanded to 100 megawatts, though the Danish partner pulled out, BP said in an email.
For comparison, a pilot project at Shell Plc’s Rheinland refinery in Germany, which started operating in 2021, has capacity of 10 megawatts.
BP is also looking at green hydrogen at its Castellon refinery in Spain.
The funding is from the Lower Saxony regional government and Germany’s Economy Ministry within the framework of the European Union’s IPCEI Hy2Infra initiative
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