Irish floating wind developer Simply Blue Group has revealed its intention to integrate floating offshore wind with large-scale e-fuel production plants.
The developer’s floating wind development pipeline stands at over 10GW around the world and the company stated 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.
These carbon neutral fuels can be used to power our aeroplanes, ships, and construction machinery.
Simply Blue Group’s director of hydrogen and sustainable fuels, Michael Galvin, 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.”
Galvin said 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.”
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.