Mott MacDonald awarded key role on Europe’s largest hydrogen project

Mott MacDonald has been appointed by the NortH2 Consortium1 as its technical integration and optimisation contractor for the NortH2 project, a global flagship project for large scale green hydrogen production and the largest hydrogen project in Europe. The consultancy will develop conceptual designs that will be carried forward to a final investment decision.

NortH2 wants to play a major role in achieving the European, Dutch and German climate goals and accelerating the development of an international hydrogen market. The project aims to achieve this through large-scale production, storage and transport of green hydrogen to industrial sectors that are difficult or unable to electrify. New offshore wind farms would generate the green power and could gradually grow in capacity from 1 GW in 2027, to 4 GW by 2030, to more than 10 GW in 2040. These wind farms would be additional to the already planned wind farms for the renewable electricity supply. They would be directly linked to the hydrogen plant and all power would be used for the production of green hydrogen. With this, the consortium aims to produce 1 million tons of green hydrogen per year by 2040. This would avoid about 8 to 10 megatonnes of CO2 per year.

Mike Haigh, Mott MacDonald executive chair, said: “This is a signature project that will have a huge impact on global efforts to mitigate climate change. Securing this appointment is a testament to our world-class credentials, which was clearly recognised by the NortH2 Consortium.”

As lead technical integration consultant, Mott MacDonald will collate, evaluate and develop the potential technical solutions required to realise the project. The company will also provide cost, scheduling and risk management services associated with the technical implementation, to provide a clear path to the consortium for investment decisions and further development for the project. The management and control of risks and opportunities will play a key part during the development of the concepts and inform the optimisation process to achieve the target levelised cost of hydrogen.

NortH2 aims to integrate 4GW of offshore wind energy into the green hydrogen value chain by 2030 and more than10GW by 2040. The project is set to complete a feasibility study by mid-2021, with project development scheduled to start in the second half of 2021.

Ian Clarke, Mott MacDonald’s global sector leader for energy, said: “The development of green hydrogen production projects like this are critical to achieving North-West Europe’s net-zero ambitions and meeting their energy needs. Phase one alone aims to generate 4GW of green offshore energy to produce, store and distribute hydrogen to end consumers such as hard to abate industrial sectors by 2030.”

1. NortH2 consortium is made up of some of Europe's largest energy and port organisations: Shell, Gasunie, Groningen Seaports, Equinor and RWE.