Chilean liquefied natural gas terminal operator GNL Quintero has successfully submitted the environmental impact study (EIS) for its USD-30-million (EUR 28.3m) green hydrogen production project in the region of Valparaiso, central Chile.
The project foresees the construction of a 10-MW electrolysis facility at the company’s regasification terminal in Quintero Bay. With a plant factor of around 42%, the electrolyser will produce around 1,800 kg of hydrogen per day on average, or about 660 tonnes annually in an initial stage. GNL Quintero expects to increase production gradually to about 1,600 tonnes per year, it said in the publicly available EIS.
The electrolyser will be powered by renewable energy to make the whole scheme green. GNL Quintero said that it will either procure certified renewable energy on the market or get it from a third party’s renewable energy generation project.
The goal of the project is to produce compressed hydrogen to supply industrial companies in the Quintero Bay area, Puchuncavi, Concon and La Calera.
The Quintero Bay green hydrogen project is a product of a collaboration between GNL Quintero and Spanish companies Acciona Energia (BME:ANE) and Enagas SA (BME:ENG), renewables developer and gas grid operator, respectively.
In December 2021, the project was one of six initiatives selected to receive state funding in Chile’s first call for green hydrogen proposals. However, GNL Quintero had troubles with getting the project pass environmental scrutiny over the past two years.
In August 2021, the company’s declaration of the environmental impact, which is not the same as the full-scale EIS, was not accepted for a review on purely formal grounds. The filing had to be signed electronically by both of GNL Quintero’s legal representatives, as the law states, but the document only had the electronic signature of only one of them. This was enough for the Valparaiso authorities to reject the declaration.
Not long after, GNL Quintero fixed the error and re-submitted the declaration, only to voluntarily withdraw from the environmental evaluation proceedings in July 2022.
This time, the company filed an EIS, which is much broader in scope than the declaration and includes remediation and follow-ups, and secured the reviewers’ acceptance for evaluation.
If the authorities give their approval, GNL Quintero and its partners intend to start construction of the plant at the end of March 2025, according to the new filing.
Source : Renewables Now
