Hydrogen Energy Applications for Valley Environments in Northern Netherlands

HEAVENN is a large-scale demo project addressing the requirements of the call, by bringing together core elements: production, distribution, storage and local end-use of H2 into a fully-integrated and functioning “H2 valley” (H2V), that can serve as a blueprint for replication across Europe and beyond. The proposed concept is based on the deployment & integration of existing & planned project clusters across 6 locations in the Northern Netherlands, namely Eemshaven, Delfzijl, Zuidwending, Emmen, Hoogeveen and Groningen, with a total initial investment of 88 M EUR. The main goal is to make use of green hydrogen across the entire value chain, while developing replicable business models for wide-scale commercial deployment of H2 across the entire regional energy system. HEAVENN aims to maximize the integration of abundant RES resource available in the region, both onshore (wind and solar) and offshore wind, using H2 as: (i) a storage medium to manage intermittent and constrained renewable inputs in the electricity grid; and (ii) an energy vector for further integration of renewable inputs and decarbonisation across other energy sectors beyond electricity, namely industry, heat and transportation. The project facilitates the deployment of 11 HFC end-user applications across the project clusters, while ensuring the interconnection between them. This will be delivered by facilitating the deployment of key transport & distribution gas infrastructure to deliver green H2 from supply to the end-user sites. In this way HEAVENN will demonstrate the coupling the existing electricity and gas infrastructures at scale, to decarbonize industry, power, transport and heat across the entire region. The scale of the deployment delivered by HEAVENN is sufficient to achieve by itself significant economies of scale & improved business models across the entire value chain.