A large hydrogen production facility with an electrical output of 300 megawatts is being planned for the nuclear power plot in Simon Karsikko, which was once reserved for Fennovoima. About 20,000 tons of hydrogen per year would be obtained from it.
The facility would be more than ten times larger than P2X Solutionsin 20 megawatt green hydrogen and synthetic methane production plant in Harjavalla.
The hydrogen plant is planned to be built in 2028 by a Finnish energy processing company eFactorywhich is part of the one established in 2020 Storm Energy. It plans to use its own, inexpensive wind electricity to produce green hydrogen.
Behind the storm is a Danish investment fund Copenhagen Infrastructure Partnerswhich invests more than two billion euros in green projects in Finland.
“The Danish fund is our partner, but not a partner in the company. They get a certain share of the electricity produced, because together with Myrsky, they own part of our wind power projects”, says the chairman of the board of Myrsky and eTehtaa Tuomas Candelin-Palmqvist.
Candelin-Palmqvist worked before St1:n as the manager responsible for wind power.
Danish money as an alternative
Myrsky has more than 50 wind power projects around Finland, three of which combine solar and wind power. In addition, the company’s new area occupation would be hydrogen production.
Fact
33 hydrogen projects
At the end of last year, there were 33 hydrogen projects under development in Finland, most of which were projects the size of P2X’s Harjavallan plant, around 20 megawatts.
The information appears from the information collected by AFRY Management Consulting Oy.
The largest electrolysis facilities of one thousand megawatts are planned to be built in Kokkola and Kristiinankaupunki in 2030.
The final product of the Kristiinankaupunki plant would be hydrogen, and the Kokkola plant ammonia and liquefied hydrogen.
The owner of both projects is the American company Plug Power. It is one of Europe’s largest players in the hydrogen market.
In the electrolysis of hydrogen production, about a third of the electricity fed in turns into waste heat, for which a destination is now being sought in Simo. One big greenhouse could be like that.
eTehdas has entered into an agreement with the municipality of Simon, which explains the start of hydrogen production in Simon Karsiko, near the southern border of the city of Kemi.
“The cost estimate for the project is close to one billion euros. We are looking for a financing partner for it,” says Candelin-Palmqvist. According to him, one option is Danish money.
In 2016, Simo lost the race for the location of the Fennovoima nuclear power plant in Pyhäjoki.
Hydrogen energy.
Myrsky Oy’s owner and chairman of the board Tuomas Candelin-Palmqvist was previously responsible for St1’s wind power business. He says that the billion-dollar hydrogen plant in Simo could be financed with Danish money.
PHOTO: Tapio Mainio
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The company is also planning an industrial-sized battery warehouse on Cape Simon Karsiko, where wind electricity could be stored.
“Starting the collaboration is a concrete step towards enabling the electricity further processing industry in Finland”, says eTehtaa’s CEO Jussi-Pekka Kuivala.
“With the amount of hydrogen produced in Simo, five percent of the aviation fuel used in Finland per year could be replaced,” Kuivala calculates.
He presented the project in Simo on Tuesday. Simo is one of Finland’s largest wind farms.
“The first hydrogen project in the Maritime Lapland region is meaningful to us. Promoting the green transition is included in our municipal strategy,” says Simon, the municipal manager Vivi Marttila.
“If it goes well, the inexpensive waste heat generated in the production of green hydrogen would be used in greenhouse cultivation, as the sector has suffered from the rise in energy prices. We have had a discussion with the people of Närpö about acquiring know-how, because there are no greenhouses in Simo,” says Simon, chairman of the municipal council and former municipal manager Esko Tavia.
Flowers instead of tomato and cucumber
Simo plans to zone a large plot of land near the hydrogen plant in Karsikko for greenhouse cultivation.
Sweden’s largest single greenhouse has been completed this year in Örebro, southwest of Stockholm, with an area of no less than ten hectares. It utilizes the waste heat of Billerud’s packaging board and liquid packaging factory with the same idea that is now being planned for Simo.
The first tomatoes have already gone on sale in Örebro. The new giant greenhouse produces every 10th tomato for the Swedish market, i.e. about 8,000 tons of tomatoes per year. The greenhouse project cost SEK 1,400 million, or about EUR 125 million. Another greenhouse of the same size is planned next to it.
“Tomato and cucumber production is overproduced in Finland. Flowers, for example, could be grown in Simon’s greenhouses,” says the CEO of Osuuskunta Närpiön Vihannes Tomas Lindfors. The cooperative mainly cultivates cucumbers and tomatoes in a total area of 50 hectares.
“In the long term, the production of tomatoes and cucumbers in Finland and other Nordic countries must be increased, because the increasingly hot summers in Southern Europe lead to water shortages. Vegetable production there becomes difficult. In the future, food will be exported from north to south and not the other way around,” adds Lindfors.