KEME Energy to invest €5.2 million in green hydrogen production in Sines

  • Lusa
  • 8 February 2022

The investment aims to install "a green hydrogen production plant by photoelectrolysis, electrochemistry, compression and storage in PED bottles" in the Sines Industrial and Logistics Zone (ZILS). 

KEME Energy, a Portuguese company that implements renewable energy self-consumption projects, will invest €5.2 million in the installation of a green hydrogen production plant in Sines (Setúbal), it was reported on Monday.

The investment aims to install “a green hydrogen production plant by photoelectrolysis, electrochemistry, compression and storage in PED bottles” in the Sines Industrial and Logistics Zone (ZILS).

According to the manager of the complex, aicep Global Parques, KEME Energy leased 4.8 hectares of land in ZILS allowing the hydrogen plant to be installed in an “environmentally reclassified area of a former quarry.

The future pilot unit represents a “total investment of €5.2 million” and will have “a capacity of 2.52 MW [Megawatts], with an estimated production of 160 tonnes of green hydrogen per year”.

The project “will be implemented in two phases” and, according to the manager of ZILS, the first phase “will have a total capacity of 1.26 MW, with an estimated annual production of 80 tons of hydrogen for use in industry and for electricity production.

With the implementation of the first phase of the project, “approved by the national programme POSEUR of Portugal 2020,” it will be possible to “supply a renewable energy community to be created in Sines, through a fuel cell”.

The second phase, “already in project”, has “an application to the PRR [Recovery and Resilience Programme] Environmental Fund, and will double the installed capacity”.

“Considering the total value of green hydrogen production and the “pilot project” nature, success could result in its replication in other locations nationwide,” the statement read.

According to aicep Global Parques, this project “will be a net contributor to the national goals of decarbonisation of industry”.

“The implementation of this project in ZILS, means being close to a logistics platform of international scope with the capacity to receive relevant actors from the maritime-port, industrial and logistics sectors,” highlighted the CEO of KEME Energy, Miguel Matias, quoted in the statement.

For the promoter, “these actors may benefit from the infrastructure to be created as customers, promoting the introduction of hydrogen in the short-medium term in the sectors of shipping, industry and transport of goods by land.

For the executive chairman of aicep Global Parques, Filipe Costa, also quoted in the statement, “the production of green hydrogen in the Sines Port, Logistics and Industrial Complex is essential for the environmental and economic sustainability of the national energy, refining, petrochemical and chemical hub.

“The availability of hydrogen will allow Sines to attract more energy-intensive activities, such as the chemical and metallurgical industries, or telecommunications services,” he stressed.

KEME Energy is a Portuguese company specialising in the implementation of renewable energy self-consumption projects, renewable energy generation (production systems for sale to the grid and production systems for distribution in the case of hydrogen), energy efficiency and support for the development of offshore renewable energy technology.