Purpose-Built Ship Deploys Wave Energy For Green Hydrogen – CleanTechnica

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The cargo shipping industry is leaning on ammonia to push dirty bunker fuel out of the picture, and one stakeholder has come up with an unusual approach. Instead of squeezing a new ammonia plant into space on land, the Dutch startup SwitcH2 is sending theirs out to sea. The initial idea was to take advantage of offshore wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen, and deploy the hydrogen to make green ammonia shipping fuel. Now SwitcH2 is piling on a third option in the form of wave energy.

More Wave Energy, Less Greenfield Development

There being no such thing as a free lunch, locating new industrial facilities at sea is not free of impacts. However, the offshore location does relieve industrial stakeholders from carrying the baggage of full-on habitat destruction that comes with paving over land to build new industrial parks. An offshore site also eliminates the potential for significant impacts on air quality and public health in populated areas, which is a crucial factor for industries that use and produce toxic substances.

Access to nearby offshore renewable energy resources is another benefit, with wind energy being the primary resource today. A movement is also afoot to piggyback arrays of floating solar panels on offshore wind platforms.

Wave energy is also beginning to enter the picture. The idea sounds simple enough — convert the kinetic energy of ocean waves into an electrical current — but engineering a durable, efficient, cost-effective device has been a tough nut to crack. Like any brand new industry, the wave conversion field also needs to build up its supply chain and bulk up on orders in order to compete with its more established peers. A high profile setback in 2008 didn’t help, either.

Stakeholders have been persistent, though. Ocean waves are dependable, predictable, and infinitely available. With their relatively small footprint and low profile, wave energy converters can also sit in locations where offshore wind turbines are not appropriate.

In October of 2023 I visited the Ocean Energy Conference in The Hague, where attendees were optimistic about the prospects for wave energy to break through the market wall this year. Signs of fresh activity in the marine energy field have been emerging in recent months, and the SwitchH2 venture is one of them.

Wave Energy To Produce Green Ammonia Fuel, At Sea

SwitcH2 is not cutting corners on its green hydrogen-to-ammonia venture. Instead of outfitting an existing ship, the company has commissioned a new vessel purpose-built to house a 300-megawatt electrolyzer system, deploying wave energy, along with other renewables, to jolt green hydrogen gas from water. The hydrogen can then be combined with ambient nitrogen from the air to produce green ammonia fuel.

“With backing from Norway-based BW Offshore and Dutch Oceans Capital, SwitcH2 is leading the development of industrial-scale offshore green hydrogen and green ammonia production units based on proven FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading) technologies,” Switch2 explains. The Dutch government is also assisting with grant support.

For the wave energy part of the operation, the company has hooked up with the Swedish firm CorPower Ocean. The startup is known for its massive onion-shaped buoy-type converters featuring a pumping action that mimics the human heart. CorPower has been putting its 4th-generation C4 device through its paces off the coast of Aguçadoura in Portugal, a preferred testing site due to its optimal but occasionally challenging waves.

More Green Ammonia For Cargo Ships

If 300 megawatts sounds ambitious, it is. As described by SwitcH2, the new vessel almost reaches the size of the Very Large Crude Carrier class. “The floating facility is expected to reach an annual production capacity of almost 300 kton of green ammonia — enough to fuel multiple oceangoing vessels for a full year,” SwitcH2 explains.

The plan is to launch the offshore operation in the northern region of Portugal. SwitcH2 doesn’t expect to produce green ammonia before 2029, but when it does, look out. The company is already planning to ship its green ammonia model out to West Africa with an eye on ammonia markets in Europe, and it is targeting Dutch waters in the North Sea for green hydrogen. “These initiatives are pivotal to advancing SwitcH2’s gigawatt-scale ambitions,” the company explains.

“A floating production system is by definition a mobile asset which we will build where this is cheapest and which can be deployed around the globe, wherever we have access to attractively priced wind, wave, and/or solar energy,” emphasizes SwitcH2 Director and co-founder Saskia Kunst.

Next Steps For Wave Energy

As for who’s gonna pay for all this, that’s a good question. The cost of green hydrogen has been dropping, but it is still high compared to the conventional hydrogen supply chain, which consists primarily of natural gas. Wave energy also doesn’t come cheap. Still, one of the themes to emerge at the 2023 Ocean Energy Conference was the idea that energy buyers will pay a premium if necessary, as long as they can get their hands on carbon-free resources when and where they need it.

That fits the wave energy profile. Crowded coastal communities are squeezed for space to put new wind turbines and solar arrays on shore, but they do have plenty of waves.

“Wave energy is not only predictable — making it a valuable complement to variable renewable energy sources — it is also available along coastlines where the majority of the world’s population lives,” explains the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a branch of the US Department of Energy.

“But wave energy could do more than power coastal communities; this renewable could create clean drinking water from the ocean, power offshore seafood farms, and help decarbonize international shipping — all with energy from the ocean itself,” NREL continues.

Here in the US, keep an eye on the US Navy, which set up the nation’s first grid-connected wave converter test facility in Hawaii back in 2010. The site has been upgraded since then.

Somewhat ironically, during the first Trump administration, the Energy Department provided the funding and other support to construct a more ambitious wave converter test site off the wave-optimized coast of Oregon, under the umbrella of Oregon State University. Unlike the Hawaii facility, which is located in a bay, the new PacWave South facility enables wave energy innovators from around the globe to test their devices out in the open ocean.

In addition, the Energy Department has organized dozens of inland labs and test tanks into a program called TEAMER, also available to wave innovators from overseas as well as domestic startups.

Whether or not any of this activity can survive the next Trump administration is a good question. If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread.

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Image (cropped): A new floating green hydrogen and ammonia production facility will deploy flotillas of wave energy converters along with wind and solar power (courtesy of Corpower Ocean)