The gas network of the Leipzig remote management operator ontras is 7700 kilometers long. Nationwide, the subsidiary of the Leipzig network of Gas Aktiengesellschaft (VNG), which is controlled by the Stuttgart energy group EnBW, is in second place. In addition to its own network area, the largest remote management operator in East Germany is currently attracting attention with the approximately 25 km long section of the Bad Lauchstädt energy park to the Leuna Chemical Park. Because a few days ago, Ontras put on the first section of the planned hydrogen kernel network in East Germany. “It is the first management that is ready for operation and with official approval,” says Gunar Schmidt, who is responsible for the operation and safety of the network. But what is much more important: The management should soon be the first to flow from the producer from a section of the hydrogen core network to the end customer in the green hydrogen. “We will soon have the entire value chain for green hydrogen on site,” says Cornelia Müller-Pagel, which at the VNG leads the Green Gase department and the Energy Park Bad Lauchstädt. In the real laboratory of the energy transition 20 kilometers south of Halle, VNG wants to map the value chain of the green hydrogen economy in the consortium with partners such as the energy company Uniper, the wind power planning company Terrawatt and the subsidiary ontras. “Not only technically, but also economically”, eight wind turbines with an installed performance of a good 50 megawatts are already in operation. An electrolyser of the Dresden mechanical engineering company Sunfire with an installed electrolysis capacity of 30 megawatts is under construction and is to produce green hydrogen this year. With the commissioning of the hydrogen pipeline to Leuna through Ontras, the transport route for the green gas up to the refinery of the anchor customer has now been completed, and the first project phase has been completed. “This not only works technically, but also economically,” says Müller-Pagel. Speeding should be added to the Bad Lauchstädt energy park, an underground memory for hydrogen, which will have the cubature of the Cologne Cathedral, for example. The investment decision for the memory has not yet been made, but here too the consortium is in the starting blocks, says Müller-Pagel. Overall, the consortial partners want to invest a good 210 million euros in the Bad Lauchstädt energy park, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics with 36 million euros. “If it does not work here, it does not work here anywhere” If the plan opens, the project should become the core of a green hydrogen economy in Central German chemical triangle and have a model character for all of Germany. “If it doesn’t work here, it doesn’t work anywhere, because here we have all the necessary requirements,” says Müller-Pagel. In addition to the availability of renewable energy, one of the most important location factors in the region is also the existing management infrastructure, which includes the second longest hydrogen pipeline in Germany, and the factory management has been connected to the chemical locations Bitterfeld, Schopau and Leuna since the 1970s. Today it is operated by the industrial system specialist Linde. The natural gas pipe dates from the same time, which ontras has been upgraded for the fleeting hydrogen molecules in recent months and has now put it into operation. In the former GDR, so -called city gas was transported by the pipeline, a gas mixture with a high hydrogen content. “The chemical location Leuna is the center of hydrogen production in the Central German chemical triangle,” says Christof Günther, managing director of Infaluna, which operates the largest chemical location in East Germany. The generation based on natural gas dominates, but the generation of hydrogen in electrolysers has gained importance. Linde operates the largest of these systems in the Leuna chemical park with an electrolysis capacity of 25 megawatts. It produces about 3,500 hydrogen of the cubic meter per hour. For comparison: The conventional facilities in Leuna produce approximately twenty times and consume as much natural gas as the whole city of Leipzig. Interest from industrial customers in Leuna Talking to an investor for an electrolyser with a capacity of 100 megawatts that would provide a research complex of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the chemical park with hydrogen, says Günther. The production of the electrolyseur in Bad Lauchstädt will increase the generation performance for hydrogen at the chemical location by about three percent. The interest of potential industrial customers in green hydrogen is not only large in the chemical park, says Sebastian Pflüger from VNG Handel & Sales, which is also part of the consortium in the Bad Laucht energy park. The uncertainties around the business model with green hydrogen are currently even greater for most interested parties. “A large part of our customers ask us the three same questions: When does the green hydrogen come, what price does it come and how far are we from the core network?” Says Pflüger, who is responsible for building up the electrolyseur in Bad Lauchstädt in cooperation with Uniper. There is still no satisfactory answers to all questions, he says. With Total Energies, VNG was able to complete the then first delivery contract of its kind in Europe for green hydrogen at the end of 2023. The French energy group wants to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of its refineries by 2030. Total also relies on green hydrogen, for example for the deflection of mineral oil products. The planned annual production in Bad Lauchstädt from initially around 2700 tons of green hydrogen has completely secured. A few weeks ago, the group also concluded an agreement with the energy group RWE, which from 2030 wants to transport 30,000 tons of green hydrogen from the Lingen planned 300 Megawatt electrolysis capacity to Leuna. A connection of the two locations via the hydrogen core network still has to be created. Overall, total delivery contracts for up to 500,000 tons of hydrogen per year have advertised for its refineries. Solid green hydrogen from Germany will also become attractive for industrial customers outside the refinery sector in the future, the costs will have to be down. Cornelia Müller-Pagel, the project manager of the Bad Lauchstädt energy park, also hopes for pragmatism in Brussels. “Please do not regulate a market that is not yet available and give us air to breathe, then we will also be able to implement the energy transition economically,” she says in the direction of the EU. The requirements for the certification of renewable fuels of non-biological origin, which are defined as part of the EU law to promote energy from renewable sources, led to around a third less full load hours in Bad Lauchstädt for the production of green hydrogen. Heitmüller called for reliable framework conditions to present the year’s years in early April. “So that we can implement our ambitious goals towards biogas and hydrogen, we need political framework conditions that are stable and legally secure and enable long -term investment decisions,” he said. Overall, the company, which achieved a turnover of a good 16 billion euros last year and made an operational profit of 321 million euros, would invest around five billion euros by 2035. According to the company, a total of 329 million euros flowed into infrastructure projects around the business with biogas and hydrogen. VNG also relies on new partners. At the beginning of April, the infrastructure investor CVC DIF has entered the VNG subsidiary Balance, which is one of the leading operators of biogas plants in Germany. If the responsible antitrust authorities agree to the transaction, the infrastructure division of the financial investor CVC will in future hold 49 percent of balance. The new partners did not provide any information about the financial details of the deal. The company announced on request that VNG was the first transaction with an infrastructure investor. “Other transactions of this kind are currently not planned,” says a company spokeswoman. Throughout Germany, the necessary investments for the 9000 kilometer network are estimated at around 19 billion euros. The VNG subsidiary Ontras wants to bring in up to 1100 kilometers. The company has already made an investment decision for 600 kilometers to connect the Central German chemical triangle with the large areas of Leipzig and Berlin up to the Baltic Sea. 500 kilometers of it are to be contested with recovered natural gas lines such as between Bad Lauchstädt and the Leuna chemical park.
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