ABO Ener­gy explores hydro­gen and syn­thet­ic fuel pro­duc­tion in Oulu

The Ger­man ABO Ener­gy group has been grant­ed a plan­ning reser­va­tion to build a hydro­gen pro­duc­tion plant in Oulu in north­ern Fin­land. In the pre­lim­i­nary plan, the new hydro­gen plant would have an elec­trol­yser with a max­i­mum capac­i­ty of 600 MW. Imple­men­ta­tion would take place in 2–3 phas­es.

In addi­tion to hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, the com­pa­ny is explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­duc­ing methanol and sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (E‑SAF) in Oulu. The fea­si­bil­i­ty of syn­thet­ic fuel pro­duc­tion depends on the avail­abil­i­ty of bio­genic car­bon diox­ide. ABO Ener­gy would offer the waste heat gen­er­at­ed for use as dis­trict heat­ing in the Oulu region.

The first phase is planned to be oper­a­tional around 2034–2036. For the new green tran­si­tion indus­tri­al area of Pyyryväi­nen, the plant would be imple­ment­ed by ABO Ener­gy Suo­mi Oy, whose par­ent com­pa­ny is ABO Ener­gy KGaA of Ger­many.

“Fin­land is an incred­i­bly attrac­tive des­ti­na­tion for invest­ment, thanks to our abun­dant, afford­able green elec­tric­i­ty and excep­tion­al capac­i­ty to scale up pro­duc­tion. Our unique strength as a com­pa­ny lies in our abil­i­ty to sup­ply renew­able ener­gy to hydro­gen projects direct­ly through our wind ener­gy port­fo­lio,” says Aman­da Card­well of ABO Ener­gy Suo­mi Oy.

Elec­tric­i­ty in Fin­land is among the cheap­est in Europe. The Oulu region is the largest pro­duc­er of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty in Fin­land.

Sev­er­al oth­er hydro­gen pro­duc­tion and H2 deriv­a­tive projects have already been ini­ti­at­ed in the Oulu region. Gas­grid Fin­land plans to estab­lish a hydro­gen trans­port infra­struc­ture to con­nect Oulu’s hydro­gen pro­duc­tion with the rest of Fin­land and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, includ­ing Ger­many. Oth­er hydro­gen pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies have also decid­ed to invest in Oulu, attract­ed by the inter­na­tion­al port of Oulu, bio­genic car­bon diox­ide sources and the Euro­pean TEN‑T trans­port net­work. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu is also a cen­tre of hydro­gen research, pro­vid­ing the city with both high-qual­i­ty hydro­gen exper­tise and a large pool of hydro­gen spe­cial­ists to meet com­pa­nies’ work­force needs.

This land reser­va­tion is only a pre­lim­i­nary deci­sion; a final invest­ment deci­sion will be made lat­er.

---

About Oulu GH2 — Togeth­er towards green hydro­gen busi­ness in Oulu and North­ern Fin­land project aims to cre­ate a cen­tral­ized hydro­gen econ­o­my inno­va­tion ecosys­tem oper­at­ing mod­el for the region of Oulu and North Ostro­both­nia. As part of the project, the hydro­gen val­ley of the Both­n­ian Bay will be built by shar­ing infor­ma­tion and bring­ing actors togeth­er, shar­ing news and best case stud­ies, and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing them to dif­fer­ent parts of the net­work by Busi­nes­sOulu. Oulu GH2 is fund­ed by the Coun­cil of Oulu Region, which finances the project as part of the EU pro­gramme: A Reju­ve­nat­ing and Skilled Fin­land 2021–2027, the EU’s region­al and struc­tur­al pol­i­cy pro­gramme JTF fund.