Vienna-based integrated chemicals, fuels and energy company OMV announced that it has made a final decision to invest “a mid-three-digit million-euro sum” to build a 140 MW green hydrogen electrolysis facility in Lower Austria.
According to the company, the new green hydrogen plant will be one of the largest of its kind in Europe, and will supply its nearby Schwechat refinery, with an expected CO2 emissions reduction of approximately 150,000 tons per year.
Green hydrogen is viewed as one of the key building blocks of the transition to a cleaner energy future, particularly for industrial and transport sectors with difficult to abate emissions, in which renewable energy solutions such as wind or solar are less practical.
Around 90 million metric tons of hydrogen are produced annually, although the vast majority is extracted using fossil fuels, which create pollutants and GHG emissions. The development of clean hydrogen capacity, such as green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy to power the process to extract hydrogen from other materials, will require massive investments in areas including infrastructure, electrolysis, and transport.
According to OMV, the new facility is expected to start-up at the end of 2027, and will produce green hydrogen using renewable energy from wind, solar, and hydro power. The new project follows the completion in 2024 of a 10 MW electrolyzer facility built in 2024 in partnership with Kommunalkredit, an Austrian bank specializing in financing infrastructure. As one of the first green hydrogen production plants in Europe, it has been certified as Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO) under the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) legislation.
Martijn van Koten, OMV Executive Vice President Fuels & Feedstock and Chemicals, said:
“With this project, we are re-inventing the production of everyday essential fuels and chemical products – a groundbreaking step that demonstrates how industrial innovation and sustainability can go hand in hand. By using green hydrogen in the future, we are making the processes and production of fuels and chemical products more sustainable and are future-proofing our industry.”
In 2022, OMV launched its “Strategy 2030” to shift from oil & gas production to renewable fuels and circular solutions and become a net zero emissions company by 2050.
