"And together with President Lula of Brazil, we are announcing the European Union's support to build one of the biggest hydrogen projects in the world, in the Brazilian State of Piaui," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a press release last week. The project is part of a two billion euro Global Gateway investment in the hydrogen value chain in Brazil, von der Leyen added.
The new Green Energy Park will be a 10 GW production facility for clean hydrogen and ammonia, which will then be shipped to the Krk island from where hydrogen will travel to serve industrial off-takers in southeast Europe, the head of the European Commission said.
Ammonia is seen as a possible solution for storing and transporting hydrogen for use in emission-free fuel cells and turbines.
Zlatko Komadina, governor of Croatia's Primorje-Gorski Kotar county, where the island of Krk is located, on Monday expressed his disappointment that local authorities have received information about the project from the media rather than from the developers of the project that would make Krk an import port for ammonia, according to a video published by public TV HRT. Ammonia is poisonous and the investors have to apply high environmental protection standards, Komadina said.
The island of Krk is home to a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal that started operations in January 2021. It delivers natural gas to the Croatian national transmission network, which is connected to fellow EU member states Slovenia, Italy and Hungary, as well as to non-EU members Serbia and Montenegro.
According to the website of Green Energy Park Krk, its objective is to source, import, and distribute 10 million tonnes of renewable ammonia per year. The staged development programme will start in early 2024 and run through 2030. At completion, total investments will be more than 2.5 billion euro ($2.7 billion).
By the time this story was published, project developer Green Energy Park has not responded to SeeNews emailed requests seeking more information about the project.
