On November 4th, Port of Antwerp, Port of Zeebrugge and the Chilean Ministry of Energy signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in which they commit to working together to make green hydrogen flows between Chile and Western Europe a reality. This cooperation will eliminate the last barriers and gaps in the run-up to the effective start-up of green production, the set-up of the logistics chain between the continents and the logistics in the Belgian seaports and their hinterland, according to the Port of Antwerp's release.
In the MoU, that was signed on Energy Day during the COP26 in Glasgow, the different parties express their interest in collaborating on the important strategic issue of setting up a corridor between their countries to ship green hydrogen or derivatives, produced in Chile and received at the Belgian Ports, for further distribution to meet expected demand in Europe. The signing of the MoU took place after a debate on hydrogen import between Sébastien Arbola (Executive Vice President, ENGIE), Tom Hautekiet (CEO, Port of Zeebrugge), Juan Carlos Jobet (Chilean Minister of Energy) and Tine Van der Straeten (Belgian Minister of Energy), and moderated by Noam Boussidan (Lead Energy, World Economic Forum).
Port of Antwerp, Europe’s largest port in terms of size and integrated chemical cluster activities, and Port of Zeebrugge, Belgium’s most important LNG hub and offshore wind power plant, play an important role as fossil energy hubs for Western Europe. They receive, store and dispatch important volumes of energy to power, heat, chemistry and transportation off-takers. Port of Antwerp and Port of Zeebrugge intend to become part of the Belgian and European climate solution by acting as early mover renewable energy hubs, making use of their infrastructures, know-how and network to import and deploy important volumes of hydrogen to the European hinterland
Both ports are convinced that the future Western European energy system will need to focus on domestic wind and solar energy, as well as imported volumes of renewable hydrogen. They believe that hydrogen carriers will be the adequate form of energy to allow the transition in sectors such as marine shipping, chemistry, fuel and steam production. Hence their role as a key actor in the Hydrogen Import Coalition, whose goal is to combine public and industrial partners to gain all the system insights needed to take the right actions.
Chile, through its national Green Hydrogen Strategy, has set very ambitious targets in order to become a carbon-neutral country by 2050 and utilize the high-quality and abundant renewable energy resources available to it. The country aims to be producing the cheapest green hydrogen by 2030 and become one of the top 3 exporters of green hydrogen by 2040. The Chilean Ministry of Energy, which is leading the green hydrogen strategic policy, is required to engage with overseas parties to cooperate on the issue of setting up international supply chains of green hydrogen from Chile. The signing of this MoU is a further step towards fulfilling their sustainability commitments.
Port of Antwerp, Port of Zeebrugge and the Ministry of Chile will collaborate on a regular basis in order to exchange knowledge, experiences and other information to further explore the possibilities of the cooperation. This latter is particularly important to eliminate the challenges in the run-up to the effective start-up of green production in Chile, the set-up of the logistics chain between our continents and the logistics in the Flemish seaports and their hinterland.
ENGIE, partner of the Hydrogen Import Coalition with an historical presence and long-standing expertise in both Belgium and Chile, key countries for the Group, aims to develop renewables and propose projects to launch the import supply chain of renewable molecules between the two countries.