Simply Blue Group Looks to Integrate e-Fuels Production with Floating Offshore Wind
Simply Blue Group, headquartered in Cork, Ireland, is a leading blue economy developer focused on developing pioneering blue economy projects – floating offshore wind, wave energy and low-impact aquaculture. Floating offshore wind is the dominant market segment in Simply Blue Group’s portfolio, with an impressive pipeline of over 10GW of floating offshore wind projects across the globe. These projects offer a fantastic opportunity to harness renewable energy at scale that could be used to power large scale e-Fuel production plants.
An e-Fuel is a synthetic fuel, made using renewable electricity, water and air. For example, carbon dioxide from the air can be captured and combined with green hydrogen gas made from water using renewable electricity. The e-Fuel products are carbon neutral fuels that can be used to power our aeroplanes, ships, and construction machinery.
Speaking about Simply Blue Group’s focus on the integration of e-Fuels production with floating offshore wind, Michael Galvin, Director of Hydrogen and Sustainable Fuels, said: “The focus on e-Fuels developments such as this is a natural progression for Simply Blue Group as we harness the abundant energy from our offshore projects.”
“The concept of integrating large scale floating offshore wind farms with large onshore e-Fuel production facilities offers many advantages. These e-Fuel production plants will be very flexible meaning they can respond rapidly to the available wind energy and increase or decrease the e-Fuel production to suit the weather conditions. For example, e-Jet fuel production for the aviation sector can be varied to stabilise the electricity grid due to changing wind conditions or due to changes in electrical demand on the grid.”
Around the world, governments and industries are accelerating their efforts as they strive for “carbon neutral”. Already, ambitious legislation and incentives to deal with this challenge are in place in several regions, most notably in Europe where targets are set for renewable fuels use with some specific sub mandates for Electrofuel’s (e-Fuels) due to take effect shortly.
E-fuels, like, e-kerosene, e-methanol, green hydrogen, and green ammonia are all fuels that are produced from renewable or decarbonised electricity, water, and air. These raw materials differentiate them from biofuels, which are primarily produced from biomass.
“The electrification of many parts of our energy system won’t be possible, and for these instances we can electrify the fuel, and produce carbon neutral e-Fuels. The integration of e-Fuels production with our energy system will provide a huge “demand-side response”, which can ensure we have electricity on our grid when we need it while also decarbonizing our transport sector.” said Michael Galvin, Director of Hydrogen and Sustainable Fuels, Simply Blue Group.
