Snam focuses on green hydrogen: The European energy infrastructure operator has launched two new partnerships to support the energy transition globally. With the intergovernmental organization IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency to bring hydrogen and biomethane to become an integral part of the solution for the ecological transition and the fight against climate change, and with Iris Ceramica to develop the world's first ceramic factory powered by green hydrogen.
Both collaborations were announced on Wednesday, September 29 during the international event “The H2 Road to Net Zero”, organized by Bloomberg in collaboration with Snam and IRENA in Milan on the occasion of the pre-COP 26.
In detail, the agreement with IRENA aims to study and possibly implement, together with other partners, pilot projects aimed at the production of hydrogen from renewable sources, its transport and its distribution, with the aim of developing replicable business cases. The collaboration will also be enhanced by Snam's role and contribution in the Green Hydrogen Catapult.
“This agreement with IRENA – he commented Marco Alvera, CEO of Snam – is an important stage in the process that will lead hydrogen and biomethane to become an integral part of the solution for the ecological transition and the fight against climate change. The development of hydrogen is happening faster than expected, with costs falling rapidly, pilot projects starting in the main application sectors and the adoption of national and international plans to support it. Snam will contribute to this agreement by leveraging its experience and expertise in energy transport thanks to over 40 km of network and its role as founder of the Green Hydrogen Catapult, the initiative which aims to increase the scale of projects by 50 times in green hydrogen over the next five years”.
“Snam and IRENA – he declared Francis La Camera, director general of IRENA – share the vision of the key role of green hydrogen to enable deep decarbonisation. Green hydrogen can be a key enabler, making renewable energy available to end-users in sectors where direct electrification is limited, such as heavy industry and heavy transport. According to the forecasts of IRENA's World Energy Transitions Outlook, hydrogen, as a pillar of the path towards the net-zero goal, will be able to satisfy at least 12% of global energy demand by 2050 and two thirds will be green hydrogen”.
While the new Iris Ceramica Group plant will be located in Castellarano, in the province of Reggio Emilia, in the company production area of Via Radici Nord and will be equipped within the next year with native technologies that will allow the use of green hydrogen. This will make it possible to reduce CO2 emissions and pave the way for the exclusive use of renewable energy for zero-emission production.
The solution developed by the two companies will immediately allow the Castellarano factory to create ceramic surfaces born from a blend of green hydrogen, produced thanks to solar energy, and natural gas. In particular, a photovoltaic system (with a power of 2,5 MW) which will be combined with an electrolyser and a storage system for renewable hydrogen produced on site.
“Green hydrogen – said Marco Alverà – is the ideal energy vector for decarbonising an energy-intensive industry such as ceramics, a sector in which our country has companies of international excellence such as the Iris Ceramica Group. This collaboration, which adds to the initiatives we are carrying out in other sectors such as steel, glass and rail transport, represents a first step towards the production of ceramics with zero CO2 emissions in the future. Through our infrastructures and our technologies we want to help enable a national hydrogen supply chain to help achieve national and European climate goals and at the same time ensure the competitiveness of our industry".
“Our Group has always been driven by a strong innovative spirit and constant attention to environmental sustainability, often leading the way in the ceramic world, a highly energy-intensive industrial sector due to the type of production processes that are characterized by energy-intensive productions . Within this manufacturing scenario, our actions have always been characterized by having followed the equation Economy=Ecology, already coined in the '60s by my father Romano Minozzi, President and Founder of the Group, to indicate the path we would take from the point of view of environmental sustainability”, he declared Federica Minozzi, CEO of Iris Ceramica Group.
