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Having secured $30m Series-A funding, Green Energy Park (GEP) is a step closer to building its large-scale renewable hydrogen production and export terminal facilities.
GEP was founded in 2023 with the ambition of producing renewable hydrogen at scale. To do so it would need to build a minimum of eight production plants to supply a global distribution network.
The first of these locations is in the state of Piauí in north-east Brazil. Here GEP will build a 10.8GW green hydrogen production plant over 310 hectares, which has the capacity to produce 2.4m tonnes of renewable hydrogen.
GEP has announced it has secured $30m in Series-A funding to develop the production plant and has also obtained the long-term rights to the nearby port terminal facilities of Luís Correia.
From the Luís Correia port, the ammonia produced (ammonia is hydrogen in a chemically bound form) will be transported to a midstream hub on the Adriatic island of Krk, Croatia, as well as to other worldwide ports including in the UK, the Middle East and East Asia.
According to the company, the Piauí production facilities will feature some of the “most advanced process engineering designs from the liquified natural gas and ammonia business”. Electricity for the plant will come from renewable sources.
The plant will be built in six stages, with the first green hydrogen and ammonia produced in 2028, and the full 10GW completed in 2035.
GEP has said it aims for the Krk midstream facility to have a throughput capacity of 10 million tonnes of ammonia per year, with operations to start in 2027.
In January 2024, GEP signed a preliminary off-take agreement with Slovenian wine producer Puklavec Family Wines to use hydrogen cracked back from imported ammonia in its winemaking process.
It is now looking to form similar agreements with other companies. GEP says that by working directly with off-takers in industry and the transportation sectors, it will be able to offer a cost-competitive solution to help meet their decarbonisation goals.
Bart Biebuyck, CEO of GEP, said: “At GEP, we are on a singular mission: to produce the lowest-cost renewable hydrogen at the gigawatts scale.
“To achieve our ambitious goal, we combine cutting-edge hydrogen production technologies with innovative process engineering solutions at one of the most advantageous sites for renewable hydrogen production in the world – in the state of Piauí, Brazil.
“In short, Piauí is set to become our ground zero of the hydrogen revolution.”
