European energy policy makers apparently are taking a DNV report on offshore hydrogen manufacturing seriously. But this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, in either its assumptions or its conclusions, according to this article.
DNV is an international classification organization that sets standards for ships and offshore structures, according to Wikipedia.
There’s a rule of thumb for construction. Whatever something costs to build onshore, it costs 10x to build offshore and 100x to build on the ocean floor. Offshore wind farms make sense because they are essentially untended – there is no operations labor offshore. Construction and maintenance are it.
The article then compares this to an offshore electrolysis plant and suggests that the DNV report (which is so crucial to the EU’s thinking) doesn’t include this in their calculations.
Source: CleanTechnica Read The Article
PSR Analysis: This DNV report concludes that producing hydrogen offshore is very expensive, but that Europe should go ahead with this. The details in this report are quite compelling and this suggests that the DNV report and its recommendation should be reviewed. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
