The floating offshore wind, wave energy, and low-impact aquaculture projects are the focus of Simply Blue Group, a top blue economy developer with its headquarters in Cork, Ireland. With an extraordinary pipeline of more than 10GW of floating offshore wind projects planned for countries all over the world, floating offshore wind is the leading market sector in Simply Blue Group's portfolio. These initiatives provide a tremendous chance to scale up the usage of renewable energy, which may be used to power massive e-Fuel manufacturing facilities.
An e-Fuel is a synthetic fuel, made using renewable electricity, water and air. For example, carbon dioxide from the air can be captured and combined with green hydrogen gas made from water using renewable electricity. The e-Fuel products are carbon neutral fuels that can be used to power our aeroplanes, ships, and construction machinery.
Speaking about Simply Blue Group’s focus on the integration of e-Fuels production with floating offshore wind, Michael Galvin, Director of Hydrogen and Sustainable Fuels, said: “The focus on e-Fuels developments such as this is a natural progression for Simply Blue Group as we harness the abundant energy from our offshore projects.”
“The concept of integrating large scale floating offshore wind farms with large onshore e-Fuel production facilities offers many advantages. These e-Fuel production plants will be very flexible meaning they can respond rapidly to the available wind energy and increase or decrease the e-Fuel production to suit the weather conditions. For example, e-Jet fuel production for the aviation sector can be varied to stabilise the electricity grid due to changing wind conditions or due to changes in electrical demand on the grid.”
Around the world, governments and industries are accelerating their efforts as they strive for “carbon neutral”. Already, ambitious legislation and incentives to deal with this challenge are in place in several regions, most notably in Europe where targets are set for renewable fuels use with some specific sub mandates for Electrofuel’s (e-Fuels) due to take effect shortly.
E-fuels, like, e-kerosene, e-methanol, green hydrogen, and green ammonia are all fuels that are produced from renewable or decarbonised electricity, water, and air. These raw materials differentiate them from biofuels, which are primarily produced from biomass.
“The electrification of many parts of our energy system won’t be possible, and for these instances we can electrify the fuel, and produce carbon neutral e-Fuels. The integration of e-Fuels production with our energy system will provide a huge “demand-side response”, which can ensure we have electricity on our grid when we need it while also decarbonizing our transport sector.” said Michael Galvin, Director of Hydrogen and Sustainable Fuels, Simply Blue Group.