The Provincial Council of Bizkaia and Petronor launch the Basque Hydrogen Hub. This project seeks to promote industrial and technological development around hydrogen and help in the decarbonization of industrial processes and mobility.
Thus, the public-private collaboration between the two entities will create a unit dedicated to hydrogen at the Energy Intelligence Center (EIC) in the Abanto Technology Park. A center will be designed to demonstrate and develop the possibilities that hydrogen offers for different sectors, ranging from the transportation of long-distance merchandise and aviation to the generation of heat and cogeneration, to cover the needs of commercial or residential buildings.
Petronor will transfer its central offices to the EIC and from there act as the tractor company of the Basque Hydrogen Hub, where it will occupy approximately 2,000 m2 of space in the EIC building to locate its central offices and those of its subsidiary Edinor.
Public-private collaboration, the key to starting the process of economic reconstruction after the sharp drop in activity generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, will boost the energy transition in Bizkaia.
Under this collaboration, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and Petronor will promote the use of hydrogen as a fuel for sustainable mobility. They will assess its viability in part of the DFB’s fleet of heavy vehicles and buses.
They will also collaborate in attracting companies, business R & D units, and technology centers to generate an ecosystem around the EIC that fosters its development, as well as in the attraction and joint acceleration of technology startups.
In addition to this Hydrogen Hub project, Petronor is committed to promoting a plan for the treatment of waste (CSR) in the vicinity of the port of Bilbao to replace part of the fossil fuels it uses with the products generated from these waste with which manages to decarbonize the process and move towards a more sustainable refinery. The Provincial Council, for its part, undertakes, always in the legally established conditions, to facilitate the disposal of the waste necessary to launch the project. This use of CSR waste implies its recovery in a renewable way for the Petronor industrial facility.
The General Deputy of Bizkaia, Unai Rementería, has valued the agreement reached with Petronor as an essential step for the EIC and the future of Bizkaia: “We are going to try to turn Bizkaia into a hydrogen hub, an international benchmark for this fuel green and sustainable. In a laboratory at the service of the planet. We have the size and all the necessary elements to be a «living lab,” Rementeria has assured.
From the President of Petronor, Emiliano López Atxurra, “this public-private collaboration with the Provincial Council of Bizkaia involves the launch of the Basque Hydrogen Hub, a firm commitment to promote the decarbonization of sectors as strategic as long-distance mobility and aviation. Furthermore, thanks to this agreement with the DFB, decarbonization can also reach industrial production processes, so we are in the right direction to achieve the objectives towards a green productive economy”.
Petronor is committed to neutralizing CO2 emissions in 2050, so it will invest, together with Repsol, 80 million euros in two leading industrial decarbonization projects in the Basque Country.
The first project, with an investment of 60 million euros, consists of constructing one of the largest plants in the world for the production of zero net emissions fuel from CO2 and green hydrogen, generated with renewable energy, in the vicinity of the Port from Bilbao. With an investment of 20 million euros, the second project is a gas generation plant from urban waste, which will replace part of the consumption of traditional fuels used in the refinery’s production process.