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Fortescue wants to rush to green hydrogen in Pecém
Written by Egídio Serpa, [email protected]07:24 / May 15, 2024. Updated at 07:36 / May 15, 2024

Australian company asks the governors of the Northeast for help to speed up the regulation of H2V production activity in Brazil. It has a project ready for H2V in Ceará

Caption: Companies with projects ready for the production of Green Hydrogen are waiting for the regulation of the activity, which is 3 years late

Photo: EDP / Disclosure




Egídio Serpa

A company with operations on five continents, the Australian Fortescue, which has an industrial project ready to produce green hydrogen in the Pecém Complex, in Ceará, met yesterday in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the governors of the Northeast, including Elmano de Freitas, from Ceará.

The meeting, held as part of the world's largest event on H2V – the World Hydrogen Summit & Exhibition 2024 – aimed to continue the agenda of debates on the drafting of legislation for green hydrogen that includes structuring conditions to boost the first major investments in the sector. For the time being, the H2V production activity in Brazil is not regulated, which has delayed investments.

This column recalls that, in 2021, Fortescue confirmed an investment of US$ 5 billion in the construction of a green hydrogen production plant in the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex. The final production capacity of the project will be 837 tons per day of green hydrogen, based on the consumption of 2.1 GW of electricity from renewable sources. Fortescue's future plant will have the capacity to produce 15 million tons of green hydrogen per year.

It is the largest green hydrogen plant development project in Brazil and one of the largest in the world. The environmental impact studies for the plant were approved by the Ceará State Council for the Environment (Coema) in October 2023 and the project is advancing.

It is expected that, during the construction phase, about 5 thousand jobs will be created. In addition, an important point – from an environmental point of view – is that the plant will use treated sewage water (reused water) and water from the ocean, so there will be no impact on the local drinking water supply.

The future H2V hub of the Pecém Complex already has five pre-contracts signed with the companies AES, Casa dos Ventos, Cactus Energia, Fortecue, Voltalia.

Australians are already aware that Brazil is not for beginners. Not even for amateurs. Investing here – and especially in its Northeast region – is a torturous process. In another country that is politically and legally more organized, the regulatory framework for the production of green hydrogen and also offshore wind energy would already exist (Chile, for example, provided this regulation in a few months, and the Chilean economy is very small compared to the Brazilian one).

The issue of the delay in the regulatory framework for the production of H2V and for the generation of offshore wind energy suffers from the same ailment that, in the National Congress, delays the processing of the proposals for regulation of the Tax Reform, for 60 years a dream of those who work and produce in the Brazilian geography. It is the fault of the three powers of this Federative Republic, each with its own way of operating and relating to the interested parties.

The Executive, freely, proposes in one way; the Legislature, freer and politically stronger, modifies the proposal; and the Judiciary, sued by some political or social party or entity, accepts or rejects the appeal, hindering convergence and opening up divergence. All this has a cost, the main and most expensive of which is the procrastination of solutions that are for the good of the country and its producing and working society.

It makes no sense to wait three years to regulate an economic activity that is vital for Brazil's near future and for the decarbonization of the planet. It is with green hydrogen – green because it is produced with renewable energies – and with the disuse of fossil energies, such as oil, that a better future will be guaranteed for the globe, the house we inhabit.