NOTE: Last call to Sign Up Here for our 2nd Berlin Energy Forum, on “Germany’s Quest for Green Hydrogen: from Ukraine to Mauritania & back,” 4:00 – 5:30 PM (CET), Berlin Capital Club, followed by networking and drinks. The Capital Club is atop the Hilton Hotel, adjacent to Gendarme Market in Berlin’s Mitte district. Looks like we’ll have a full house again. There is also a delayed-video sign-up option. -o-o-o-o-o- Speakers: I’ll be joined by Dr. Dawud Ansari of SWP think tank where he leads H2 research, and Ms. Olena Pavlenko, President Kyiv’s Dixie Group via video link. Moderation: Ben Aris, Editor-in-chief & founder of bneIntelliNews, & our forum co-organizer.
Second: While writing my talk, I began rethinking a 2023 post on Germany’s green-hydrogen import scheme for Mauritania. Below is my update. — Tom O’D.
German Green Hydrogen Import Strategy is Unworkable & Ignores Mauritania’s needs
Referring to the green hydrogen MOU signed with Mauritania in 2023, Conjuncta CEO Stefan Liebing said, “(This project) will have a strong link to Germany both as a technology provider and a potential offtaker of green energy.” (“Consortium signs $34 billion MoU for hydrogen project in Mauritania,” Reuters, 8 Mar 23.)
German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle seemed quite impressed: “It has a planned capacity of 10 gigawatts – the output of roughly five to six standard nuclear power plants. The first phase of the project is set to be completed by 2028” (“Mauritania set to export green hydrogen to Germany,” DW Business, 09Mar23 archived at YouTube.)
Indeed, the MOU aims for “10 gigawatts” of electrolyzers outputting “8 million tonnes/year” (Mt/y) of green hydrogen (H2) and other products, such as ammonia. However, according to the press announcement, in 2028 the facility will have a 400 MW capacity, or one-twenty-fifth of 10 gigawatts envisioned .
The German coalition government faces a formidable energy dilemma.
On one hand, it must urgently develop enough natural gas generation capacity at a reasonable cost to halt deindustrialization, and shut coal plants it brought back online when it closed the last nuclear plants To this end, Minister Habeck (Greens) urgently won approval for installation of 25 GW capacity of new natural gas turbine generation by 2030. In addition, this new natural gas capacity is needed to back up Germany’s growing, renewable-electricity dependence, as it simply has no feasible grid storage tech to offset its weather-variability.
So too, in response to Russia cutting off gas deliveries to Germany, as part of its full scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany urgently moved to install up to seven offshore LNG floating regasification ships (FRSOs). These aimed for a new natural gas import capacity of 25 bcm/year as LNG in 2023,
In January 2024, the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) reported that, “According to preliminary figures, the total volume of natural gas imported into Germany in 2023 was 968 T”Wh (2022: 1,437 TWh).” of which 7% or almost 70 TWh was LNG. The reduction from 2022 largely reflects the fall in industrial production it is now suffering.
On the other hand, Germany urgently seeks enough future “green energy” import projects to eventually replace all this natural gas if it is to meet its decarbonization targets. The government published its “National Hydrogen Strategy” in summer 2023. (Also, “Gremany’s National Hydrogen Strategy,” Factsheet, 26 Jul 2023, by Sören Amelang and Julian Wettengela, Clean Energy Wire, is very useful.)
The (IMHO) dogmatic insistence on refusing to re-open several still-operable nuclear plants and to develop new German nuclear capacity means that the only low-carbon way the government coalition and many other political and business actors can imagine to replace all this natural gas is with green hydrogen produced from renewables in distant African, Mideast, Latin American and other states, or from developing new renewable-generated electricity it can import from nearby European countries.
This self-induced straitjacketing of the German energy system is, as I have described it, a sort of “renewable fundamentalism” — a maximalist insistence to fuel everything with 100% renewables and absolutely no nuclear.
How much of Germany’s new LNG-supplied energy could the Mauritania project replace in 2028?
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