Europe’s largest renewable company Statkraft has cancelled a sales contract for 40MW of alkaline electrolysers from Norway’s Nel, due to problems getting one of Statkraft’s Norwegian industrial green hydrogen projects — which was targeting green steel production — off the ground.
The NKr120m ($12m) contract was signed in January 2023, with Oslo-based Statkraft saying at the time that it planned to deploy 2GW of electrolyser capacity globally by 2030.
However, the company’s efforts to build a green hydrogen-based steel project in the town of Mo i Rana, northern Norway, have floundered.
In 2020, the company signed an agreement with Spanish steel manufacturer CELSA to develop a “complete value chain” in Mo’s industrial park, for the use of green hydrogen in high-temperature metal processes. However, in October 2024 the pair said they would push back planned operation of the 40MW electrolyser — which would have been designed to scale up to 300MW — from 2025 to 2027.
“Statkraft has over several years put considerable engagement and commitment into developing and attracting funding to a hydrogen project in Mo,” said Statkraft’s senior vice-president for hydrogen, Bjørn Holsen. “Despite the efforts, we have not been able to create a viable commercial model for the project in the current market conditions. We therefore need to adjust the plan accordingly and cancel our order with Nel.”
In March, Statkraft announced that it was pushing back the timeline for its green hydrogen ambitions, with a new target of 1-2GW production capacity by 2035.
“Offshore wind, hydrogen and CCS [carbon capture and storage] have become more costly and are developing at a slower rate due to inflation and shifted political priorities related to the financial support needed for these technologies,” the company noted in its 2024 annual report.
As part of it new “sharpened” strategy across its entire business, Statkraft said it would continue its efforts to become an industrial developer of green hydrogen, but “with a more focused scope”.
This includes scaling back the number of markets in which it is targeting for new electrolyser capacity.
Nel yesterday reported a $17m loss, citing a continued downturn in the green hydrogen market for its financial struggles and the continued shutdown of its 1GW Herøya electrolyser factory in Norway.
The Statkraft order had been listed as one of the contracts in its order book with “significant risk of delays”, and the cancellation will subsequently reduce the company’s backlog value by around $12m.
Hydrogen Insight has reached out to Statkraft to determine the project status of the Mo Industripark green hydrogen project.
