Finnish technologies to fuel the green hydrogen transition

Gasum and Nordic Ren-Gas in January announced the signing an e-methane off-take agreement that will help to cut greenhouse gas emissions in road and maritime transport.

Nordic Ren-Gas has agreed to supply all of the e-methane, also known as synthetic methane, it produces in Tampere, Finland, to Gasum starting in 2026. The power-to-gas plant produces the methane using wind power and biogenic carbon dioxide captured from a nearby waste incineration plant operated by Tampereen Energia.

The production process can be divided into two steps: producing hydrogen with water and renewable energy, and combining the hydrogen with biogenic carbon dioxide to produce synthetic methane.

The e-methane produced at the plant, which will initially have an annual capacity of 160 gigawatt-hours, is fully renewable and fully interchangeable with biogas and natural gas or, when liquefied, with liquefied biogas and liquefied natural gas.

It can therefore be transported using existing infrastructure, be it lorries, ships or pipelines, and require no modifications or investments in assets switching from biogas or natural gas to e-methane.

Saara Kujala, CEO of Nordic Ren-Gas, stated that the partnership enables the introduction of e-methane “very efficiently”.

“Ren-Gas has been actively building a value chain for e-methane in Finland, for which this agreement is a concrete milestone. Ren-Gas has a development portfolio of several e-methane production projects, and this partnership enables us to accelerate the development of these important green transition projects,” she said.

Nordic Ren-Gas has also agreed to feed excess process heat into the district heating network in Tampere.

Gasum pointed out that with the amount of affordable wind and solar power rising in the Nordics, producing e-methane with renewable energy is a feasible means of storing energy and distributing it to sectors such as maritime and heavy road transport where full electrification is not a viable route to decarbonisation in the near future.

Major steps toward green hydrogen economy

P2X Solutions in February took a step towards what it says is a key milestone for establishing and ramping up the green hydrogen economy in Finland.

Germany’s Sunfire reported that it has successfully installed an industrial-scale electrolyser at P2X Solutions’ plant in Harjavalta, Satakunta. With the 20-megawatt pressurised alkaline electrolyser – the first industrial-scale electrolyser in the country – installed only a year after the groundbreaking ceremony, preparations are underway to commission the plant in the second half of the year.

The plant will produce up to 400 kilos of green hydrogen an hour for the needs of chemical industries.

“Green hydrogen will play a crucial role in the transformation of the chemical sector,” stated Nils Aldag, CEO of Sunfire.

A purchase agreement for the green hydrogen has already been signed with Danisco Sweeteners, which will use the hydrogen to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at its xylitol plant in Kotka, Finland.

The Finnish Government has granted 36 million euros in funding for the project through the Finnish Climate Fund and Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.

P2X Solutions has also partnered with Oulun Energia, the energy utility of the City of Oulu.

Oulun Energia reported earlier this month that the partners intend to build a 100-megawatt electrolysis plant, a carbon-capture plant, a hydrogen and carbon dioxide storage, and a methane or methanol processing plant on an industrial site in the north-western district of Laanila.

The capacity would be significant even on the scale of Europe.

The output of the plant could be used to replace fossil fuels in road, maritime and air transport. A preliminary estimate also suggests that the plant would annually create 200–400 gigawatt-hours of heat energy as a by-product, which could be fed into the district heating network to satisfy 10–30 per cent of the annual demand in Oulu, according to Kimmo Alatulkkila, development director at Oulun Energia.

“This would enable us to produce heat in an environmentally friendly manner and improve the competitiveness of district heating,” he viewed.

The project is presently in the development phase, with the stakeholders weighing up the feasibility, location and impact of the plant. The investment decision is expected in the second half of 2025, opening the door for commissioning the plant at the earliest in 2028.

Viability of hydrogen production

Hycamite in January revealed that it has secured all the requisite permits and started building a customer sample facility in the Kokkola Industrial Park, the largest ecosystem for the inorganic chemical industry in Northern Europe.

The facility will be built to demonstrate the viability of its methane-splitting technology, which promises to produce hydrogen with only 13 per cent of the energy needed for producing it by electrolysis. The technology is able to split large amounts of methane into its component elements – hydrogen and carbon – and capture the carbon in a solid, industrial-grade form.

It can also be scaled up rapidly when using a methane feedstock, be it biomethane, geological natural gas or synthetic natural gas.

According to the Kokkola-based company, the demonstration facility will have a nominal production capacity of 2 000 tonnes of hydrogen and 6 000 tonnes of carbon. The hydrogen can be used either as fuel or industrial raw material. The carbon, in turn, can be supplied to customers as nanocarbons or other industrial-grade products with applications in areas such as batteries, composite materials, concrete products, electronics, polymer additives and supercapacitors.

Using liquefied natural gas, the facility will also have a decarbonisation capacity of up to 18 000 tonnes a year. Carbon removals can occur also with biomethane, however, said Hycamite.