Dutch King Willem Alexander paid an informal working visit to the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands last week, just a few kilometers away actually from where our two colocation data centers in Naaldwijk are situated. The theme of this visit was hydrogen. Something that interests us very much as a provider of colocation services, as Greenhouse expects to announce hydrogen related news soon.
Dutch King Visits Zeeland Province in the Context of Hydrogen
The Dutch king spoke with representatives of a number of companies in the ‘Sloe’ region, a harbor and industrial area near the city of Vlissingen, about current significance of hydrogen for various industrial organizations, the role of hydrogen in pushing the energy transition, and cooperation in the region in the field of sustainability. Hydrogen is generally seen as a means of greening the industry.
The Dutch king’s visit to the Sloe industrial area once again emphasizes the importance attached to the use of hydrogen in the coming years. In addition, the Port of Rotterdam – also in the vicinity of Greenhouse’s data centers - is now preparing for massive use, trade and transport of hydrogen in the near future.
As a colocation provider we’re not so much using hydrogen at our premises (yet), although we’ve seen some successful projects in the market already where they are using hydrogen fuel cells instead of diesel generators for data center backup power, such as announced by Microsoft for example.
As an innovative data center operator ourselves, we very much appreciate these innovative efforts though and do support the use of hydrogen as an alternative energy source. Greenhouse has put lots of efforts in the energy efficiency design of its colocation data center in Naaldwijk, resulting in this very low and ultra-energy-efficient Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) figure of 1.15. We can’t wait to announce some Greenhouse related hydrogen news very soon.
Zeeland Industry: Hydrogen Consumers
The Dutch King regularly holds exploratory background talks on a variety of subjects and themes. These are conducted by telephone, at the palace, and - like this time in the province of Zeeland - on location.
Industrial organizations in the province of Zeeland are already major consumers of hydrogen as an energy source. To give an idea of their hydrogen consumption, more than half of the Dutch hydrogen production is used by the resource-intensive industry located in the Scheldt-Delta region in Zeeland. Industry giants like Yara, Zeeland Refinery, and Dow and some others in particular are said to be major consumers of hydrogen. These industrial giants have joined each other in the Smart Delta Resources (SDR) partnership and investigated the potential of large-scale production and use of green hydrogen in the Scheldt-Delta region. Through this partnership they are dedicated to achieve a sustainable future for their operations through the use of green hydrogen.
The province of Zeeland invited Dutch king Willem Alexander as they intend to become a hydrogen stronghold together with the East Flanders area just across the border in Belgium. Until now, hydrogen being used in Zeeland is made with gas which is not sustainable. The intention is to switch to a more sustainable alternative by producing hydrogen with the use of offshore wind farms. This requires the building of an electrolysis plants though. It’s why the Dutch king also visited a high-voltage substation, from Dutch energy company TenneT, where the cables from several wind farms come ashore.
So, in the immediate vicinity of Greenhouse Datacenters hydrogen is clearly on the rise. As said, please stay tuned for additional Greenhouse hydrogen related news.
Image: © RVD - Paul Torenaar