A stone’s throw away from Greenhouse’s two colocation data centers in Naaldwijk, the Port of Rotterdam as one of the world’s key logistics hubs is a step closer towards becoming a major trading hub in Europe for green hydrogen, an alternative fuel generated with clean energy. As a provider of highly energy efficient data centers, Greenhouse Datacenters itself will be able to share some major hydrogen related news next week as well.
Port of Rotterdam Aims at Becoming European Hydrogen Hub
At only a few kilometers distance from our Naaldwijk based colocation data centers, the Port of Rotterdam Authority is now working on the development of a hydrogen pipeline together with Gasunie, the government company that is taking care of the transportation of Dutch natural gas. This project is called HyTransPort.RTM and plans are in its final stages before construction begins. The pipeline between the Maasvlakte and Pernis will form the backbone of the hydrogen infrastructure of Port of Rotterdam. It will allow the port to receive hydrogen brought by ship from all parts of the world and facilitate the transit of hydrogen to neighboring European countries.
The hydrogen pipeline is an open access pipeline. It means that the pipeline will be open to all companies who want to purchase or supply hydrogen. In the future, this pipeline will be connected to a Netherlands wide hydrogen network that Gasunie is deploying. There will also be connections to leading industrial areas including Chemelot in Limburg, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, as well as other European regions.
As a colocation provider, Greenhouse Datacenters attaches great importance to innovation, energy efficiency and the use of “true” sustainable energy sources. For our flagship colocation data center, we’ve managed to achieve a Power usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 - which is a very energy efficient result, allowing colocation clients to deploy their IT infrastructures in an energy efficient and sustainable manner. The hydrogen topic fits well into our energy efficiency approach and as such we’re proud to announce this hydrogen related news next week.
Green Hydrogen from Chile and Australia
As the Port of Rotterdam Authority aims to play a major role in the transition to clean energy in Europe in the near future, they have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding recently with Chile’s minister of energy to promote green hydrogen trade between Chile and the Netherlands. At the moment, quite some coal and oil are still entering the Port of Rotterdam, but (green) hydrogen should replace those fossil fuels in the coming years. Their goal is to start joint projects to promote the use of hydrogen while they also intend to share knowledge, best practices and experiences.
The intended cooperation with Chile focused on hydrogen trade and transportation between the two countries is not an isolated initiative. Last week, the Port of Rotterdam Authority stated that together with the South Australian government it will jointly investigate the feasibility of importing green hydrogen from South Australia to Rotterdam as well. Next to that, feasibility studies for hydrogen trade and transportation between Port of Rotterdam and Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay as well as Middle Eastern countries are also underway.
So, in the immediate vicinity of Greenhouse Datacenters the use of hydrogen is clearly on the rise. As said, please stay tuned for additional Greenhouse hydrogen related news coming week.
Image: © Port of Rotterdam