HOPE

Hydrogen Offshore Production for Europe (HOPE) intents to pave the way for the deployment of large-scale offshore hydrogen production. To this aim, HOPE will design, build and operate the first offshore hydrogen production demonstrator of 10MW by 2025 in an offshore test zone near the port of Oostende in Belgium. The two-years demonstration of a mid-scale concept on a retrofitted jack-up barge will prove the technical and commercial sustainability of renewable offshore hydrogen production, export by pipelines and supply to end-clients onshore. It will also provide an extensive experience to assess the feasibility of 300MW and 500MW offshore concepts. The experience gathered by the consortium members and the maturity levels reached at the end of the project will enable the deployment of commercial large-scale solutions as soon as 2028. HOPE gathers a unique consortium of European players with cutting-edge expertise across the whole hydrogen value chain: an offshore wind power developer, a renewable hydrogen producer, an electrolyser manufacturer, a desalination solutions manufacturer, an offshore hydrogen pipes manufacturer, a research centre, a regional development agency, a strategic consultancy and a renewables communication agency. HOPE will produce a large range of exploitable results including not only detailed designs of replicable offshore hydrogen technologies, operational data and resulting analyses from a first-of-a-kind project but also pre-feasibility studies and techno-economic assessments of two large-scale concepts. Through an ambitious dissemination and exploitation plan, the consortium intends to accelerate the deployment of large-scale offshore hydrogen solutions to contribute to reach the 10 Mt of clean hydrogen produced in Europe by 2030 to decarbonize the European economy and reach our climate goals.