Text: Marieke Enter
WUR and TNO have launched a trial project on green hydrogen on farms. An installation for the small-scale production of green hydrogen is planned at ACRRES, WUR’s Application Centre for Renewable Resources. It will be a kind of mini-hydrogen factory with which farmers can produce hydrogen using the electrolysis of water with solar or wind energy.
Because the Dutch electricity network faces capacity problems in several places (mainly in rural areas), it is getting harder for farmers to sell the electricity they are generating. An alternative is to use that electricity to produce their own hydrogen. In theory, hydrogen is a good alternative to diesel, and machinery run on diesel is one of the biggest energy guzzlers on farms. ‘So small-scale hydrogen production is a good fit with the push for sustainability that agriculture has ahead of it,’ says Chris de Visser, open cultivation business manager at ACRRES. This five-year project is due to start this summer and will be financed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate.