Spain’s ambition to leverage its vast renewable energy capacity to generate green hydrogen has come closer to reality in recent weeks as the Spanish government and utility Iberdrola have each outlined new plans to develop the zero-carbon commodity over the approaching three years.
Following the publication of Spain’s hydrogen roadmap on 7 October 2020, the country has erupted in new announcements of capacity and funding from both government and private enterprise.
The latest of these was from Iberdrola, already a leader in the push for large-scale green hydrogen production in Spain.
The Spanish utility announced on 18 November that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with world-leading Norwegian electrolyser producer Nel in order to progress Spain’s electrolyser capacity.
Iberdrola also announced the formation of a new enterprise with Basque company Ingeteam under the name of Iberlyzer.
Iberlyzer’s focus is to become Spain’s first integrator of large-scale electrolyser plants and is expected to begin operations next year.
The company aims to integrate 200MW of electrolyser capacity at Fertiberia’s Palos de la Frontera plant in Spain by 2023.
If finished on time, this capacity could make up 33-75% of Spain’s national target for 2024 of 300-600MW.
The 200MW target by 2023 also plays into Iberdrola’s announcement to have 800MW of capacity installed by 2027, making up 20% of Spain’s total 2030 target of 4GW.
The 800MW of electrolyser project will be situated across two Fertiberia plants, Palos de la Frontera and Puertollano (Ciudad Real) and is expected to receive?.8bn of investment.
A 20MW electrolyser is also due to come online in 2021 at Fertiberia’s Puertollano plant in partnership with Iberdrola. Once online this will be one of Europe’s largest electrolyser projects.
