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How Germany’s LNG Terminals Will Morph Into Green
Hydrogen Hubs
Germany is building more LNG terminals to make up for the loss of
Russian gas.
In a few years, some of that infrastructure could be used to handle green
fuels that power grids and heat homes.
![](images/05_12_2022/pic1.jpg)
Photo illustration: Stephanie Davidson; Photos: Getty (6)
By
Anna Shiryaevskaya,
May 11, 2022,
The invasion of Ukraine has put the US and Europe on a wartime
mission to abandon Russian fossil fuels. This series looks
at speeding up zero-carbon alternatives by lowering political and
financial barriers. Sign
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Germany plans to abandon
fossil-fueled power by 2035. But instead of shutting down
natural gas infrastructure, it’s speeding up construction of several
new terminals that will allow companies to import the planet-warming
fuel by ship for decades to come.
The plans are aimed at breaking Europe’s reliance on gas piped in from
Russia, of which Germany is the biggest buyer, after its invasion
of Ukraine. Because land-based terminals take several years
to build, the government has also rented floating
facilities that can start receiving liquefied natural
gas as soon as this year.
![](images/05_12_2022/pic2.png)
Rendering of the German LNG Terminal - Source: German LNG Terminal
GmbH
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To reconcile the rush to procure gas with the government’s ambitious
net-zero plan, Germany wants each of the proposed terminals to
eventually handle carbon-free
fuels imported from countries such as Australia and the
United Arab Emirates. The compromise allows Germany to address the
current energy
crunch while planning for an emissions-free future.
Companies can import LNG for a few years to make up for the loss of
Russian gas, then use some of the same infrastructure to handle green
fuels that can power grids and heat homes. But the mechanics of making
that switch are complicated, and, at this stage, largely theoretical.
“The very short-term action is to reduce the dependency on Russian
gas,” said Han Fennema, chief executive officer of Dutch state-owned
gas network operator NV Nederlandse Gasunie, which has invested in one
of the new German terminals. “I think the second phase will go quicker
than expected with green hydrogen.”
The new German terminals will be built to receive LNG — gas that has
been chilled to -160 degrees Celsius (-260 Fahrenheit) so it becomes
liquid. When vessels arrive at the jetty, the cryogenic fluid is
sucked out using pipes designed to handle super-cold temperatures and
delivered to special storage tanks. Before being shipped out, the
liquid is heated so it turns back into gas, sometimes using seawater
as a conduit.
![](images/05_12_2022/pic3.png)
Rendering of the planned HEH terminal in Stade,
Germany.Source: Hanseatic Energy Hub GmbH
Almost none of the equipment used to do this is suitable to handle
hydrogen, which is more difficult to store and transport because its
molecules are much smaller than the methane that
makes up a large chunk of natural gas. It’s true that hydrogen can
also be moved as a liquid in ships, but the gas has to be cooled to an
even lower -250°C, requiring completely different vessels. Storage
tanks, the most costly component of any LNG terminal, are no good at
holding tiny hydrogen molecules. Not all pipelines can handle pure
hydrogen; it can weaken the metal structures and cause leaks.
“The
conversion of a LNG terminal to liquid hydrogen is a technical
challenge,” said Arno
Buex, chief commercial officer at Flyxus, which operates an
LNG terminal in Belgium. “An economically viable business model… is
far from imminent.”
An
easier way to move hydrogen around is to convert it into ammonia,
which easily liquefies at -33°C. The compound, made up of nitrogen and
hydrogen, acts as a carrier for the latter. Ammonia can be burned for
power or used to make fertilizers, or converted back into hydrogen
fuel. The same tanks and pipes used to handle LNG can work on ammonia,
and the costs of tweaking an existing terminal would be just 15% of
what’s needed to build a completely new facility, Buex said.
That
approach, however, brings a new set of problems. A terminal’s
cryogenic pumps would need to be replaced to handle ammonia and, if
customers want hydrogen instead, operators have to install crackers to
break the compound down. The conversion between the two compounds is
also extremely energy intensive, meaning companies have to find vast
amounts of clean power to ensure the process is zero-emission.
That’s why most of the planned LNG terminals in Germany are proposing
a third option in the interim: importing a fuel known as synthetic
LNG. To make it, hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide — either
captured from factory smokestacks or created as bio-waste decomposes —
to form methane, giving it an identical chemical composition to
natural gas.
The
man-made methane can be easily transported and used in existing
networks, or turned back into green hydrogen and used to decarbonize
sectors such as steel production and transport. That process will
produce CO₂, which can be captured and shipped back to the source,
where it can again be fused with hydrogen to produce more synthetic
LNG, creating a closed loop that doesn’t release carbon into the air.
TES, which is developing a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.6 billion)
clean energy hub in the town of Wilhelmshaven along Germany’s North
Sea coast, says the terminal will start receiving shipments of
conventional LNG from late 2025 and that it can, at no extra cost,
move on to processing zero-emission synthetic methane from 2027. By
2045, the company plans to import enough green gas to produce more
than 5 million tons of hydrogen, the equivalent of about 10% of
Germany’s total annual primary energy demand.
![](images/05_12_2022/pic4.png)
A rendering of the TES clean energy hub in
Wilhelmshaven, GermanyPhotographer: Source: TES
While the hydrogen market is still too small to match TES’s ambitions,
a nearly 450% jump in European gas prices the past year has made the
green fuel cost-competitive with fossil fuels about a
decade ahead of schedule, according to clean energy
researchers at BloombergNEF. Part of the EU’s plan to get off Russian
fossil fuels involves providing more support to the sector.
“On hydrogen, we have to do everything that is
possible to accelerate,” said Stefan Kaufmann, an official at
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. “We have to work
on global supply chains, on fast regulation,” he said. “The war has
shown us that we need to be much faster than we thought a year ago.”
Other companies are also expecting the market to get a boost. Uniper
SE revived plans to build a floating LNG import terminal in
Wilhelmshaven, which would become part of a green hydrogen hub already
in the works. The German
LNG Terminal in Brunsbüttel plans to eventually import
carbon-neutral synthetic LNG. RWE
AG says it expects hundreds of millions of euros in
investment in its Brunsbüttel terminal, where about 300,000 tons of
green ammonia is due to arrive as early as 2026.
The Hanseatic
Energy Hub in Stade wants to increase its share of
synthetic LNG, and, as global supply grows, switch to bringing in
green ammonia, according to Buex from Fluxys, which owns shares in the
terminal. “There’s no risk of a stranded asset,” he said.
— With assistance by Fred Pals, and Vanessa Dezem
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
Nathan1@greenplayammonia.com
exactrix@exactrix.com
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