Danish investment group Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has ramped up its green hydrogen ambitions, acquiring a strategic stake in Europe-headquartered renewables developer CWP Global’s development portfolio of ultra-large-scale green hydrogen hubs, including projects in Australia.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) announced it has acquired a 26.67% stake in a development platform within CWP Global’s green hydrogen business – and the opportunity to invest in an international pipeline of renewable hydrogen hubs under development including projects across Africa, the Americas and Australia.
CWP’s green hydrogen hub portfolio has a planned combined renewable power generation capacity of nearly 220 GW. This includes the 50 GW Western Green Energy Hub planned for Western Australia’s southern coastline and the 26 GW Australian Renewable Energy Hub being developed in the state’s Pilbara region. CWP is a key player in both projects which are expected to produce millions of tons of green hydrogen or its derivative, green ammonia, each year for domestic and export markets.
CIP Partner Felix Pahl said the investment in CWP’s green hydrogen business would allow the company to expand its participation in the development of gigawatt-scale power-to-X (PtX) projects.
“CWP has a proven track record in delivering onshore renewables and has already built a strong pipeline of PtX development projects,” he said. “And we expect CWP to become a global leader in developing ultra gigawatt-scale PtX projects and contribute significantly to decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors.”
CIP has focused much of its development efforts in recent times on renewable hydrogen projects with the production and use of green hydrogen and derivatives emerging as a critical tool to decarbonise a variety of energy intensive but hard-to-abate sectors, such as mining, steel and fertilizer production, as well as long-range transport, including maritime shipping.
The company has identified Australia as key to a green energy future in the broader Asia region and one of the few countries with very substantial green hydrogen and green ammonia production potential.
The investment in CWP comes less than one month after CIP revealed plans to build a gigawatt-scale green hydrogen production hub near the steelmaking city of Whyalla on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
The Evergreen project is set to have an impressive capacity of approximately 14 GW, comprising 4 GW of solar energy, 10 GW of onshore wind energy, and 7 GW of hydrogen electrolysis capacity.
The project adds to CIP’s rapidly growing development pipeline of renewable energy projects in Australia which the company said now stands at a combined 30 GW.
This includes the 5.2 GW Murchison Hydrogen Renewables project being developed near the Western Australian coastal town of Kalbarri and the almost 3 GW Capricornia Energy Hub being developed near Mackay in central Queensland.
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