Lingen Refinery Aerial View bp Ørsted Grüner Wasserstoff im Raffinerieprozess

Lingen Refinery Aerial View Lingen Green Hydrogen

Lingen Green Hydrogen – decarbonising industry together

The Lingen Green Hydrogen project is a joint venture of two of the world’s leading energy companies, bp and Ørsted. Together, the two companies are eager to embark on the construction of an electrolyser plant in Lingen, Germany. The aim of the joint project is to provide renewable hydrogen to end users across Europe to decarbonize otherwise hard-to-abate industrial sectors. Both shareholders are multinational organisations with core competencies in managing large and complex projects at an industrial scale.

Initially, a 100 MW electrolyser is to be built, which will be supplied with renewable electricity, e.g. from one of Ørsted’s offshore wind farms. As of 2025, renewable hydrogen will be produced at a rate of up to two tonnes per hour. This renewable hydrogen will be delivered to the nearby bp refinery as well as to other customers in Germany and Europe through a nearby network of public pipelines.

In the refinery, renewable hydrogen will replace a significant part of the hydrogen currently produced from fossil natural gas, thus helping to reduce the carbon emissions at the site. Other customers may use the hydrogen to decarbonise their processes or as a green fuel.

The two project partners have applied for funding as an ‘Important Project of Common European Interest’ (IPCEI) for this electrolyser project in Lingen.

Future expansion phases will increase in the electrolysis capacity to over 500MW significantly increasing the volume of hydrogen offered to all customers. The additional production capacities for renewable hydrogen could be used to further decarbonise the refinery, for use as a feedstock to produce synthetic, climate-neutral aviation fuels and to directly use hydrogen in road transport and shipping in an environmentally friendly way.

The renewable hydrogen process

Refineries need hydrogen to produce fuels for road, air, and sea transport. This hydrogen largely stems from fossil raw materials, which release carbon dioxide when processed. A more environmentally friendly way is to produce hydrogen from water and electricity. This process is called electrolysis. If the electricity is generated from renewables, such as offshore wind, the hydrogen produced will be climate-neutral and renewable. This is exactly the approach adopted in Lower Saxony to realise the Lingen Green Hydrogen project at an industrial scale.

S3D BP Green Technology Center-201020-07-Mod

And we’re off! 100 MW in 2025

Ørsted, a global green energy major and the world leader in offshore wind, and bp, the global energy company, are planning to build and operate an electrolyser plant at the premises of bp’s Lingen refinery in northwestern Germany. The first phase of the project will have a capacity of 100 MW. The electricity is to be supplied by Ørsted’s offshore wind farms in the German North Sea. Once planning has been kicked off in 2022, construction could start in early 2023. The commissioning of the electrolyser is expected in the first half of 2025. The plant will be able to produce up to two tonnes of renewable hydrogen per hour.

Simultaneously with the construction of the electrolyser, a pipeline infrastructure will be built by other partners throughout Germany and Europe to connect the Lingen site with customers and gas storage facilities as well as other producers of renewable hydrogen. There are plans to create a European-wide hydrogen infrastructure in the long term.

bp and Ørsted are also striving to further enhance the sustainability in the operation of the plant. To this end, the use of all by-products from electrolysis will be extensively analysed in technical and economic studies. The refinery and partners from the surrounding area could benefit from by-products generated in the manufacturing process. These could include surplus heat from the electrolyser, which could be used to supply municipal residential areas with district heating. The oxygen produced in addition to hydrogen in the electrolysis process could be used at the bp refinery for decarbonising other operating processes.

Expansion by 2027: +500 MW

In further steps, Ørsted and bp can continuously increase the output of the electrolyser plant from an initial 100 MW to more than 500 MW and thus produce up to 10 tonnes of hydrogen production an hour. This will make significantly larger volumes of renewable hydrogen available to potential buyers or future customers. Connecting the project to the growing hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure will ensure the further expansion and development of the hydrogen market in Germany and Europe.

And with a higher offtake of renewable hydrogen, the bp refinery can replace its conventional hydrogen production processes entirely, i.e. the fossil natural gas-based steam reformation. In addition, climate-friendly synthetic fuels for aviation and shipping can be produced in this decarbonised production process.

Renewable hydrogen in the refinery process

bp has already demonstrated in a study that renewable hydrogen can be used in the refinery. bp’s ambition is to be fully climate-neutral by 2050 or sooner and to help the world become climate-neutral.

For Ørsted, the Lingen Green Hydrogen project is another milestone in the company’s P2X- and renewable hydrogen strategy. The company wants to be carbon-neutral by 2025 and aims to have a carbon-neutral value chain by 2040. This also includes decarbonising industrial processes using offshore wind. In the past, Ørsted was the first to demonstrate that offshore wind was competitive compared to electricity generated by coal- and gas-fired power stations. In other words, the cost of electricity generated from newly built offshore wind farms per MWh is lower than the corresponding cost of electricity from newly built coal-fired and gas-fired power stations. Consequently, the costs of the energy generated can be significantly lowered through economies of scale. Ørsted is contributing with its expertise from the planning, construction, and operation of large-scale renewable technology projects to the Lingen Green Hydrogen project.

This creates an important foundation for a strong hydrogen economy in Germany. To promote this, the partners have applied for funding through the IPCEI programme (Important Project of Common European Interest). This is one of the largest programmes for innovative low-carbon technologies aimed at the hard-to-abate industries.

The project partners

About Ørsted

The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen and green fuels facilities, and bioenergy plants. Moreover, Ørsted provides energy products to its customers. In Germany, Ørsted operates a total of four offshore wind farms in the German North Sea, which provides green electricity to approximately 1.4 million German households, and currently has two other projects in development. Ørsted is also working on projects to produce renewable hydrogen on an industrial scale in Germany. Ørsted is the only energy company in the world with a science-based net-zero emissions target as validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Ørsted ranks as the world’s most sustainable energy company in Corporate Knights’ 2022 index of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world and is recognised on the CDP Climate Change A List as a global leader on climate action. Headquartered in Denmark, Ørsted employs around 6,800 people, with 250 employees in Germany. Ørsted’s shares are listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen (Orsted). In 2021, the group’s revenue was DKK 77.7 billion (EUR 10.4 billion). Read on …

About IPCEI

IPCEI stands for ‘Important Project of Common European Interest’. This designates a significant transnational project of interest across Europe, which makes an important contribution to the growth, employment, and competitiveness of the European industry and economy through public funding. An IPCEI must contribute to the strategic objectives of the European Union (EU), be implemented by several member states, provide its own co-financing by the companies/institutions involved, have positive spill-over effects (knock-on effects) across the EU, and pursue very ambitious targets in terms of research and innovation, i.e. go well beyond the international state of the art in the sector concerned.

About bp

bp supplies customers around the world with heat, power, and mobility products. bp’s purpose is to reimagine energy for people and our plant with an ambition to become a net-zero company by 2050 or sooner and help the world reach that goal. bp is transitioning from an International Oil Company to an Integrated Energy Company, as evidenced by rapidly growing renewable project portfolio in hydrogen, biofuels, wind power, smart grid, and solar.

bp aims to become a leader in delivering efficient decarbonisation solutions, particularly through hydrogen and aim to capture 10% of the clean hydrogen market in core markets by 2030. This includes playing a material role in the development of a hydrogen economy in Germany and beyond.

For bp, we see hydrogen playing a significant role in our strategy for delivering our net zero ambition and long-term value for shareholders. We are working with our partners on developing low carbon hydrogen production and supporting industry scale-up to drive down costs and enable the hydrogen economy of the future. Read on …