Danish developer Orsted has announced the official opening of a new office in downtown Houston, Texas.
This new space will expand the company’s presence in the Lone Star State, which already includes an office in Austin with 115 employees.
Orsted owns and operates eight clean energy projects in Texas that collectively produce 2.4GW of electricity, enough to power over 550,000 Texas homes and businesses, with an additional 1.2GW of solar projects under construction.
Drawing from the area’s deep energy expertise, the Houston office will be the base of operations for approximately 30 full-time employees dedicated to both onshore and offshore project support.
In addition, many employees will support Orsted’s growing Power-to-X (P2X) business, which will be concentrated along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Leveraging green hydrogen will substitute the need for hydrogen produced from carbon-intensive sources and ultimately help decarbonize key sectors of the American economy.
“We are excited to bolster Orsted’s presence in the Lone Star State, which is already home to nearly a dozen of our clean energy projects,” said vice president and head of onshore and P2X Americas at Orsted Melissa Peterson.
“Houston is the ideal location to base our growing Power-to-X operations, especially due to the existing energy workforce that will be needed for the engineering, construction, and operations of Orsted’s future facilities.
“Expanding our footprint in Houston is a testament to our commitment to decarbonizing the most hard-to-electrify sectors and our continued growth in Texas and throughout the Gulf region.”
Orsted is a member of the Houston-based HyVelocity Hub, one of the seven centres selected by the US Department of Energy Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations to receive funding for the development of new hydrogen projects.
The company is developing a P2X facility of up to 675MW on the Texas Gulf Coast with a capacity to produce up to 300,000 metric tons of e-methanol annually which can be used directly as a marine shipping fuel, or as an input in sustainable aviation fuel or in chemical production.
This e-methanol will be produced using energy sourced from approximately 1.2GW of new onshore wind and solar generation.